blog 1: Natural Disaster-heat waves

For this week’s blog we had to find an article on a natural disaster and how people were affected by it! I found an article through New York Times about a very unique natural disaster. When people think about natural disasters they usually think of tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes but this one was about heat waves! People may not think of this as a “disaster,” more or less people (especially Minnesotans) may like it for a change, but little do we know they can be very dangerous! According to the Center for Climatic Research at the University of Delaware, an average of 1,500 Americans die from the heat! That is more people that die than people that die from the others combined! In the year of 1995, Chicago got hit with the deadliest heat wave. It caused a lot of destruction such as hospitals closing down and people with lost electricity while it got up to the 100’s. It also ended up killing 739 people that week! I thought it was interesting to hear about this natural disaster because I never knew that it was such a big deal! According to scientists, these disastrous heat waves didn’t even hit in the warmest climate zones!

Bahrampour, Tara. "Most Deadly of the Natural Disasters: The Heat Wave." New York Times. 13 August 2002. 1 February 2009. <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9804E6DA103AF930A2575BC0A9649C8B63>