Despite promises, California doesn’t know how many people died in record summer heat wave
TUESDAY, JULY 29—There were no mass casualties. No new fires. No power outages. No power outages. What there were were warnings from meteorologists all over the Golden State, and there will be more of them until the last drop of rain falls to end the drought.
So why does California wonder whether a record temperature record is broken on July 30th?
By all counts, the heat wave was an unmitigated disaster, but the state isn’t in a position to say if there were any fatalities or if any more will occur. There were no heat-related fatalities and no major fires, and there were no power failures. There were warnings of power outages, but there could have been warnings about heat as well, and power outages caused by the lack of rain.
That’s just a sample of the many numbers that the governor’s office and the National Weather Service have trouble telling us:
The official death toll was zero.
There were no heat-related injuries and no heat-related deaths.
There were no power failure reports of any sort.
There were no heat waves or other record-breaking heat events.
There was no increase in the number of wildfires.
On the weather front, there were no weather disasters.
The temperature on July 29th was 101.8 degrees at 9am in Los Angeles.
The record high was 105.1 degrees at 11:23am at Las Vegas.
The record low was 76.7 degrees at 4pm on June 26, 1978.
The current record is 104.2 at 6pm on July 31.
In response to the heat wave, the governor’s office issued a warning, and state and federal officials put out statements that were both reassuring and chilling. We’ve already noted how the warnings have been both reassuring and chilling.
Gov. Jerry Brown has called for a massive infusion of new water