With temperatures rising, hosts Brittany Hoffman and Dane Ryals are diving into the ways the Valley tackles its infamous heat problem. First, our hosts discuss how the city of Phoenix is working to defeat the heat with David Hondula, Director of the Heat Response and Mitigation Office. Then, they speak with Cleo Warner from Maricopa Association of Governments on the resources available to help keep you cool during the summer.

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of your daily commute or how transportation impacts the community you call home? Maybe you want to explore outside your community and don't know where to start. Well, you are in luck because this is where you hop on. I'm Brittany Hoffman and I work in Communications for Valley Metro. In this podcast, we'll discover all the ways that public transit enhances lives across the Valley. Welcome to Storylines. Welcome back to another episode of Storylines. Just as the seasons are changing, we're switching things up here on the podcast. I'm going to be joined by a variety of employees here at Valley Metro so that we can touch on all things transit and what's happening in our community. My first guest host is from our Marketing department.

Welcome, Dane.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here as the guest host.

I don't know about you, but it's getting real hot, real fast here in the Valley.

It's true. We are already hitting a hundred degrees almost. We've had a few really hot days and we're just in the middle of April, getting closer to May. So, it's definitely a top of mind for everyone.

That's why this episode we're focusing on heat Dane. It's something we always know comes this time of year and it stays for what seems like a really long time, but there's ways that transportation can help beat the heat in the Valley.

That's right. So our first guest is someone who is an expert in heat relief and mitigation from the City of Phoenix.

My name is Dave Hondula and I'm the Director of Heat Response and Mitigation for the City of Phoenix.

Awesome. We're so happy to have you on the podcast David. Could you explain a little bit about the purpose of the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation.

Well thanks so much for having me. Great to be on to talk about our office and what the city's doing more generally with many partners in the region to improve how we're responding to and mitigating the threats of extreme heat. Extreme heat is a significant public health hazard, not just in Maricopa County, but across the country that we're continuing to learn more and more about. We’re also in an era of rising temperatures and we see a warmer future ahead for Phoenix and many other cities. And we're increasingly learning that against this backdrop that heat is a problem and heat is a problem that's probably getting worse. Cities haven't been very well organized to tackle that problem.

If there's a building on fire, in your neighborhood, you know who to call. If you need to get your trash or recycling picked up, you know who to call. But what if you're concerned that your neighborhood is a little hotter than others, or you're concerned about how many people are going to the hospital from heat in the city, that is a problem that hasn't had a very clear issue owner all across the country.

And two years ago, Phoenix City Council and Management made the bold move to create the nation's first publicly funded office, focused on exactly those challenges as part of our municipal government structure. That’s how we came to be and we interpret our mission as twofold, and that's reflected in the two-part name of our office, Heat Response and Mitigation.

Heat response is trying to help protect public health during the summer when it's so hot, and mitigation is trying to implement long-term strategies that cool the city and improve our quality of life.

And David, you mentioned it, the temperatures just continue to rise here in the Valley. And so, when it comes to heat in Phoenix versus other major cities, do you have the toughest job in America?

I don't know if I have the toughest job in America. But in terms of a place where the problem is focused and where we have the opportunity to be innovators in leading the implementation of solutions, I think we have a great opportunity. Phoenix is the hottest large metropolitan area in the country, and as such I think our office was born in part out of necessity.

But we've had the opportunity to learn through various projects and engagement with some thought leaders over the past several years How working on edge cases is really an opportunity to improve what we're doing for the entire market. We've learned about cases, for example, in developing kitchen products for people who might have some restricted mobility or challenges with their hands.

If we can make a kitchen tool that works for them, it might be the case that works better for the market as a whole. Same idea in the heat world. If we can find impactful ways to improve people's experiences of summer heat in Phoenix, boy, it would seem to give us a lot of confidence that we can do so in many, many other cities across the country and beyond.

So, while the challenge is quite significant here, I think we're also very well positioned to innovate and lead.

Can you talk a little bit about the role that sustainability plays in addressing Phoenix's heat?

I think there are a number of interesting ways that our offices’ work intersects with projects that might be interpreted as sustainability minded in general. But there's also a very practical way that they're related. And that the de facto heat officer for the City of Phoenix before our office was created was our Chief Sustainability Officer, Mark Hartman.

I think just to give one example of how sustainability goals and the work of the heat offers are intertwined we can think about what our goals are in the region for the use of active and public transportation modes. We know that all across the world whether can be a barrier that discourages people's use of public transit.

In many cities, it's about rain, or winter weather discourages them from using those modes. Here, it's the heat. And if we're going to see the significant mode shift that we're looking for to reach some of our sustainability goals related to air quality, greenhouse gas emissions, public health. If we're going to be getting people out of their cars, walking, biking, and using transit, we're going to have to figure out a way to make people's experience with the heat, a little, or maybe a lot more comfortable.

You touched on it; public transportation is vital to heat mitigation in the City of Phoenix. How important is it that people take at least one trip or two trips on public transit?

We know that the transportation system is central in many, many of our sustainability conversations. And finding ways to have more efficient and cleaner transportation systems in general, which often involves the use of public transportation systems getting more people engaging with those systems is very important.

I can give a couple of ways that come to mind immediately in terms of intersection with the heat world. One of the major contributing factors to the urban heat island, and I'll explain what that is in just a moment, but one of the major contributing factors to the urban heat island is the emission of what’s called anthropogenic or waste heat into the environment.

Heat that's emitted from machines. If anyone's ever stood next to a car, know that car's hot. It's pumping out a lot of heat into the environment. The urban heat island is the concept that city centers tend to be warmer than the surrounding areas.

This is particularly true at night and folks can see it as they drive into and out of downtown Phoenix from surrounding areas. You can watch your thermometer go up and down. It's that strong of an effect. One of the reasons that the center of the city is hotter than surrounding areas is because we have more machines there. Machines like cars that are emitting heat into the environment.

Anytime we can have fewer machines operating, that'll give us a chance to reduce how much heat is emitted in the environment and can quite literally change the weather in the center of the city, improving the quality of life for people who live there.

So I think you may have just touched on one of the things that people can do to help the heat situation. But what are some other ways that someone listening could contribute or could help with the heat situation we have here in Phoenix.

The heat situation as you called it, I think we learned by the day really how broad and complex it is. Heat intersects with people's lives in so many different ways. So I'm going to offer a few ideas here that are reflective of very different parts, of the heat world.

Let's start with the most acute, serious emergency problem that we see during the summer, and that's our heat associated deaths and illnesses, which are most concentrated among the people experiencing homelessness in our community.

So anything that we can do to help our unsheltered neighbors, whether it's making a donation to a shelter or another social service program, or maybe providing a donation of water to the Human Services campus through their water drives. That can help a very very particular part of the heat problem that people's lives are quite literally on the line.

What we can do in terms of our own networks, is to pick up the phone and check on our friends and family members. We know that people who are socially isolated are also at higher risk during the summer and a simple check can go a long way.

Especially in cases where an air conditioning unit has just failed or maybe somebody's taking some medication that impacts their ability to perceive how hot it is. A lot of over-the-counter medications have this effect on our body, and we might not quite realize that we're in as much trouble as we are. So just having a conversation, how are you feeling? How's your air conditioner working? That can go a long way as well. Then stepping back, thinking about the other part of the heat problem. The heat problem in the environment. How hot it is in the city. What can we do there? I think participating in city processes that impact what types of buildings and structures are being built in our city is a really important way that, people can get involved. Asking and learning about what our expectations are for landscaping, how we can maintain landscaping in the city.

For folks who own or have the ability to manipulate their landscape, manipulate their building. Ensuring that we have reasonable landscaping. So those are just a few examples across a really wide suite of options.

David, our city and the Maricopa County region is growing so fast, and as you mentioned, more cars are coming to the Valley, more people are coming to the Valley. What role does the population play in heat in the Valley?

This goes back to this concept of the urban heat island. Folks who study the history of climate science can find evidence going quite a ways back into the record that there’s some evidence that this urban heat island phenomena occurs even for small settlements, congregations of a thousand, 10,000 people. Anytime we're bringing people together we tend to be generating a hotter place relative to the surroundings.

So the intensification and growth of Phoenix's urban heat island is directly coupled with how our population has grown. We can see it very clearly in the temperature records when we compare Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport to the surrounding areas.

But there is good news. It doesn't have to be a hotter future for Phoenix., as our population continues to grow. One of the reasons that it's relatively hot in downtown Phoenix compared to the surrounding areas, one of the reasons that the urban heat Island phenomena exists is that we've made particular choices about how to develop what materials we've used, how we've laid out the city, how high the buildings are, how far apart they are. All these decisions are really consequential. What our transportation system is. As we look into the future, as we continue to grow and develop, we can make different choices. And there are some climate modeling studies that suggest that if we make different choices moving forward than we have in the past, we can continue to grow without adding additional warmth to the city. In some extreme cases that in these modeling runs the future Phoenix can even be a cooler one than we have today with a much larger population. So, there is reason to be optimistic that we can pursue cooling even with a growing population. But it is going to take a shift in our thinking and a shift in our strategies, to realize that possibility.

David, there are so many ways that we can be tackling heat challenge, but obviously they can't just all happen overnight. So what are your goals, like short-term, long-term, perfect scenario? What do you really want to see here in the City of Phoenix?

We're about a year and a half into our office’s existence. Tso this is a question that we ask ourselves and our team here and ask community members ask other departments what they want to see us focusing on. We're certainly very conscious of the public health statistics about how many people are getting sick and dying from heat in our community. Those numbers have been rising dramatically since about 2014.

We need to not only stop that increase, but start moving those numbers in the other direction, and I think there is a pretty good idea about the types of programs that can be effective in doing so. We need to help advocate for matching the scale of the resources that are needed to the scale of the problem and thinking a little bit more broadly than those public health statistics.

A big motivation factor for our office is to improve people's quality of life. If there are fewer concerns that are voiced to the city, to the media, between neighbors about different ways that heat is causing problems in people's lives, that will be a huge win for the city and region.

And those concerns are, everything from, I'm nervous about, family member might have a real health problem if their air conditioner goes out and we don't have the money to, pay for it to the daily inconveniences that all of us encounter. The seatbelt buckle is too hot. The slide on the playground is too hot. I can't walk home from the store with my ice cream because it melts in the summer.

Finding ways to plug the gaps in our systems that create those inconveniences I think will ultimately improve everybody's quality of life. And that would be a good barometer of success for us.

So when you think about all the work that's been done so far, are there any successes or steps in the right direction that you'd like to highlight?

Let me give you two, one heat response, one heat mitigation. Heat response was integrating professional case managers from our human services department with our heat relief outreach teams. So as we're out there distributing water bottles, letting people know where cooling centers are, we can also connect people to the critical social services that will improve their heat resilience over the long term by hopefully getting them connected into a safer or more stable housing situation, or perhaps other programs that can be helpful as well.

We had a lot of good engagement there last year. We saw very tangible examples at the end of some of our outreach shifts. Folks have made a meaningful step forward to shelter and some cases are headed to shelter that night. Those were some big really heartwarming wins. We had many of them last year and are after many more.

And on heat mitigation side, we've been able to successfully argue to allocate a pretty good chunk of the city's American Rescue Plan Act allocation, this is a big federal money as part of covid relief, to invest in heat mitigation projects. We have good programmatic budget now to improve tree canopy in underserved neighborhoods, to add shade structures to the public right of way, along busy pedestrian areas, and also have increased our city budget for home weatherization.

I'm really excited that the City Council made this investment in heat mitigation, putting more money into these strategies that will help everyone, and in particular transit system users have a better experience in the summertime. Certainly, the biggest investment I can think of in our regional history to those types of projects.

You also mentioned it's really important that people get involved because it's not just the city who can do all this alone.

So how can people really get involved, learn more, take action?

I think it's important for people, to be involved in conversation with us and other city departments because the people who live in our city neighborhoods are the experts in those neighborhoods. The people who are having challenges at the workplace related heat are the experts in what those challenges are and have the best ideas about what the solutions are.

So we are eager to keep learning from the community and we are very open to coming to neighborhood association meetings. We've been doing a lot of that, visiting other types of community gatherings, fairs. We are trying to get ourselves out there as much as we can with the small team into the neighborhoods, into the places where people already are.

So please look for us. We have a nice orange canopy, the Heat Ready Phoenix Team. We're out there and we'd love to engage and we're happy to receive invitations to come to other events that might not be on our radar. If folks are looking for more traditional or formal engagement with us, the city's Environmental Quality and Sustainability Commission is the public advisory board or commission for the city that's most closely relevant to our offices work. So Phoenix EQSC folks could come give a public comment at that meeting. And we certainly invite folks, to check out our social media feeds at Heat Ready PHX or visit our website at phoenix.gov/heat.

Brittany, David provided a lot of great information about heat in the Valley, mitigation efforts and ways all of us can play a part in keeping the temperatures.

Dane. It is something we have to do here in the Valley. The population's growing, more people are coming. Heat is only going to continue to rise unless we take some of those mitigation steps. After the break, we're going to learn about some efforts by Maricopa Association of Governments to help residents and people across the Valley deal with the heat.

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Be prepared to beat the heat, carry a water bottle, and keep cool during your ride. It's also a good idea to wear sunscreen and create your own shade with a hat or umbrella.

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A lot of the things David talked about are long-term projects that are really going to help the Valley over the next decade or generation, whereas we know that there's an emergent need right now to help people when these temperatures go above triple digits.

That's right. The heat's something we deal with every year, every summer. And our next guest is going to give all of us some resources we can use to help beat the heat.

I'm Cleo Warner. I'm a Human Services Planner in the Human Services Department at the Maricopa Association of Governments, otherwise known as MAG.

Awesome. And we're here today to talk about the Heat Relief Network. Can you just tell us a little bit about what that network is?

I would love to. The Heat Relief Network is a regional partnership with municipalities, nonprofits, the faith-based community, businesses. Basically groups around our region that are working together to coordinate access to water, air conditioning or cooling, and places to rest and recover during the summer heat that we experience.

With the goal of preventing heat related death and injury.

This program has been so helpful since its inception. Can you tell us how it got started and how it's grown and evolved?

From what I understand of the history of the Heat Relief Network, this all began after a really deadly heat wave in 2005 that occurred in the area. This was when more than I believe 30 deaths among our unsheltered population that killed by the heat wave in a relatively short amount of time, like a week or something.

And so, the state health department got together and they decided to map out where some of these heat deaths occurred and have a larger conversation about what access to resources looked like in those locations where that was happening. And that is where MAG joined the conversation and said let's make this more than just a journalistic endeavor.

Let's get this map available out to the community and actually figure out where resources are needed and start moving this effort forward with coordinating how we can make this a full community effort.

When is the heat relief network map available and how long does it run?

The map is available during what we consider our heat relief season, our heat season, which is May 1st through September 30th. So that is when you'll be able to go on our website and access the interactive map. However, there are ongoing efforts to expand the season. We know that we get our first a hundred-degree day before May almost every year.

Looking in the future to really expand this timeline from April 15th to October 15th. Hopefully, this is something we can all work towards. As mentioned, this is a volunteer network and it's really on our partners to be able to do this and that's a really big ask to continue to expand the network.

Can you touch a little bit on what organizations are involved in the Heat Relief Network?

In 2022 we had 58 individual organizations involved and this number seems to just keep growing every year that the Heat Relief Network has been up and running. So this ranges from a lot of city sites, to faith-based organizations, nonprofits, businesses, fire stations, libraries, you name it. Its groups that are able and willing to get together to offer just some of the most basic but most needed services to our community during the heat season.

You mentioned all of these different locations. What can people expect when they arrive to them? When they're going to get some of these resources? What can they expect?

Well, what you can expect depends a lot on the type of site you are going to. So, MAG's role in all of this is to map the four distinct sites that make up the Heat Relief Network. They are donation sites, hydration stations, cooling centers and most recently this year, respite centers. So even though the services will shift a bit depending on the organization that is running that site, this is all volunteer based by the way, So it definitely varies site to site. You can expect a hydration station to offer water bottles or a place to fill a water bottle. You can expect a cooling center to be an indoor air-conditioned site that offers access to hydration. And then with our newest sites, the respite centers, this is going to be a location where you can expect to come in and sit or lay down for a period of time in order to recover from the heat stress that you are going through. As I mentioned, it can vary from having a folding chair and a water bottle handed to you to a full list of resources that you could have access to like first aid or wound care or even connection to housing resources.

It really varies location to location.

You talked a little bit about the various organizations and the locations people can visit. Can you talk a little bit about what happens behind the scenes to make all of that possible?

So MAG is not directly involved in what it takes to provide resources to care for people in heat crisis.

We're not the body actually on the ground at cooling centers or these respite centers, but just from conversations in our cooling center work groups and all the coordination conversations we have, it definitely seems like a full-time job to keep resources at your locations. And this looks like connecting people who come in with other organizations, connecting community members with other community members who are going through similar experiences.

This mean looking at the map to call donation centers to see how you can get the water bottles or donated items that the people need who are visiting your centers. So it is just sort of constant communication on the ground, figuring out how you get what you need to get day-to-day. And so often at a lot of our sites this goes really far beyond just water and donated items.

But like how do you connect someone with shelter who needs it? How do you talk with someone about rent or energy bill assistance if they're coming in asking you those questions? How do you connect someone with food banks or have the ability to offer first aid care at your facility? It really depends site by site how connected it gets, but it can easily just become a full-time effort to keep your location stocked and a safe site for people to visit.

You just listed off a ton of services that are needed in so many different ways by so many different people. And another service that obviously we at Valley Metro provide is transportation. How do you see public transportation as a factor and a supporting role in the Heat Relief Network program?

Public transportation, in my opinion anyway, can really be seen as playing a really huge role in this network. And I don't think its role can be understated at all when it comes to heat relief in the summer. In a lot of ways you can think about the network as this like living developing system and public transit really offers threads and a web that keeps the community connected with the network. So, we are still gathering data on how much public transit is used to actually get people to heat relief sites. But you could also imagine every shaded rail stop or bus stop as this potentially lifesaving heat relief from our summer temperatures that we experience and an opportunity to provide people with information that they need to get to a place that's providing water or AC. And even just the simple task of providing rider with AC while they're getting to their destination and need to get out of the heat.

I imagine this alone is just an incredibly important piece of the Heat Relief Network puzzle that keeps us all safe during the summer. I think public transit plays a huge role in keeping this all running when it comes to our summers here.

When you think about the network and look at it on a map, how are gaps identified and how are the locations that are needed identified? And then how do you fill any gaps that you may have?

So there are efforts happening with various partners, one of which is a research group at ASU working on map optimization, where every year they compile all of the data, compare it, where we have sites with, where heat related injury and death are occurring in our region.

Overlay those and see where there are gaps from our previous season and how we can work on efforts to get more volunteers in areas where we are missing sites still. Every year I would say we get more and more sites.

We fill in more of those gaps. It's never enough. Our heat related death numbers rise in a really stark way every year and it's constantly an ongoing effort to see how we can evolve this network to meet the growing needs of our community.

You mentioned this is all volunteer based, so I'm guessing that donations are needed. For people listening, how can they help?

There are a number of ways you can help with the network. You could start by going to azmag.gov/heatrelief where you can learn more about how the network functions and read some frequently asked questions. If you are a business or organization, you can definitely sign up to be involved by being one of these sites. We will have our signup link ready on our website in April.

So that will be available for people to access. And once our map is live, you can look on there to see where there's a convenient location for you to donate to if you are an individual. Common items that are needed to donate, always water bottles. There is never enough water bottles when it comes to our summer.

But things like insulated water bottles, cooling bandanas or cooling fabric, insect repellent, hygiene kits, first aid kits, even something like an SPF lip balm. Those are always in need and can always be useful for our sites.

Awesome. And is there anything else, just in general you'd like to share about the Heat Relief Network or anything else that individuals or organizations can do to help?

I'll add that another thing you can do to help is just get the word out about the map and share the map. We'll have a QR code available for people and just really spreading the word to your community that this is a resource and there are locations that people can go to for relief. If you are someone on a fixed income or your AC breaks or something happens where you are working outside and you need access to water quickly, this map is available for everyone to use and really stressing that these sites are a community-led effort for everyone in our community.

Dane, I've known about the MAG Heat Relief Network for a while, so I make sure every year I drop off a case of water to the donation station to help our community stay safe during this dangerous weather.

It's such a great resource, not only for individuals to make sure they stay safe, but as you mentioned, give others an opportunity to help everyone else out and make sure that we're all staying as cool as possible during the summer hot months.

And Dane, Valley Metro has our own component to help people stay safe during the super-hot temperatures that hit us, especially in that July and August timeframe.

That's right. You know when you're standing out at the bus stop or you're waiting for the train to come, heat is definitely a factor. And knowing the schedule or knowing when that next train or bus is arriving with the Valley Metro App is a great way to avoid the heat, making sure that you're not standing out there too long, but also still making it for that trip that you're taking.

So if you already haven’t, make sure you download the Valley Metro App. It's available in the Google Play and Apple app stores. Dane, thanks for joining us. It's been a great time on this episode of Storylines. Learning how we can help our community and stay safe.

Thanks for having me. It was great to talk to David and Cleo and just get some more resources to help everyone out.

Don't forget to subscribe to Storylines wherever you get your podcast, so you never miss an episode.

For Valley Metro, I'm Brittany.

I'm Dane.

Thanks for riding with us.

We'll meet you at the next stop.

Storylines is produced by Alex Tsotsos and Dane Ryals. Peter Corkery is the executive producer. I'm Brittany Hoffman. Thanks for listening.