City Ignored Emergency Plan; Daley Defends Response to Heat Disaster

via http://www.suntimes.com/index.html

July 18, 1995, TUESDAY, Late Sports Final Edition
BYLINE: BY FRAN SPIELMAN and MARY A. MITCHELL
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1
LENGTH: 915 words

The city apparently ignored its own guidelines for declaring a hot weather emergency and waited until Saturday -- when bodies began piling up at the Cook County morgue -- to implement its heat emergency plan, prompting critics to say Monday that the city's response was too little, too late.

As the death toll reached 179, Mayor Daley insisted that city officials had reacted to perhaps the worst hot weather crisis in Chicago's history on an emergency footing even though no emergency was declared until Saturday. He also complained that Commonwealth Edison had failed to provide adequate service during the heat wave.

But his efforts to defend the city's response were complicated when a city official suggested that the victims, most of them elderly, were partly to blame for their deaths by shutting themselves off from society.

"We're talking about people who die because they neglect themselves," said Human Services Commissioner Daniel Alvarez. Metro Seniors in Action, the city's largest seniors group, expressed outrage and demanded a public apology.

Daley, who late last week had urged reporters not to blow the hot weather "out of proportion," acknowledged Monday at a news conference at the Levy Senior Citizens Center, 2019 W. Lawrence, that his administration failed to anticipate the magnitude of the heat disaster.
But Daley said an emergency declaration would not have altered the city's response because his department heads were in an emergency mode.

"We acted in an emergency alert," agreed Health Commissioner Sheila Lyne. "Get that straight. We did it all."

The city's page-and-a-half Heat Plan calls for an emergency declaration when the weather forecast predicts the heat index, which measures the effect of temperature, humidity and wind on the body, will top 105 degrees. The index was forecast to hit 105-110 Thursday, the day the temperature was a record 106, and 110-120 Friday. The actual heat index readings were 119 on Thursday, 116 on Friday and 106 on Saturday, when an emergency was finally declared.
Metro Seniors in Action maintained that an earlier heat emergency declaration would have made a difference by sounding the alarm to isolated seniors who comprise a disproportionate share of heat victims. "Clearly, the sheer number of deaths is an indication that not everything that could have been done was done," said Executive Director Jennifer Neary.

The group criticized the Chicago Police Department for failing to dispatch officers assigned to the newly reinstated Senior Citizens Unit to conduct "well-being checks" on the most vulnerable seniors in their districts.

Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez conceded that it was a mistake to wait until "late Saturday morning when we became aware that there were a great number of deaths -- particularly of elderly people" to call out officers assigned to the Senior Citizens and Community Relations Units.

Later Monday, the police department issued a media advisory stating: "Beginning late last week, neighborhood relations officers in each of the 25 police districts contacted the mnagers of buildings in their districts where large numbers of seniors reside. These visits were to check on the well-being of elderly citizens."

The mayor said, "Human Services, Aging, all of them were out prior to this thing. . . . But let's be realistic. No one realized that high an occurrence (of death) would take place.

"The Police Department was keeping statistics. That was talked about Saturday morning. . . . The numbers came in very frightening. I'll be very frank. That's what happened. I don't think anyone realized what could take place dealing with heat.'

Dr. Quentin Young, president of Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, said the sheer number of deaths demands close scrutiny of the city's plan to deal with heat emergencies.
"This provokes a whole set of public health issues in the future because we have so many elderly people living alone. We have to develop a buddy system where neighbors and public officials check on these people daily or even twice a day at a certain point.

"They should be removed to an area that is cooler."

The heat emergency plan, prepared in June, appears to understate the potential problem with the claim that "There is little documentation that excess mortality and morbidity occur without significant and sustained elevation of the mean daily temperatures for less than 3-4 days."
That appeared to be the theme at City Hall all last week in the days leading up to the heat disaster. Daley went ahead with a crowded schedule of senior citizens picnics, arguing that it was too late to get the word out to elderly residents who might "show up and find nobody there."
His first public warning to residents came Thursday, after a City Council meeting, when he focused more on fire hydrant openings than senior citizens at risk. On Friday, the mayor held his first, full-blown news conference on the heat but still downplayed the seriousness of the situation.

"It's hot. It's very hot. We all have our little problems, but let's not blow it out of proportion," he said. "It's like getting heavy snow. It's like getting real cold weather. Yes, we go to extremes in Chicago. And that's why people like Chicago. . . . Let's just all work together and calm down."
At that Friday news conference, Alvarez was unable to say how many cooling centers were available, nor did he have a firm plan in place for transporting the elderly to them.