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Millions of people in the central and eastern U.S. continue to swelter under extreme heat this week. Five years ago, another heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest. It smashed heat records in a region that historically hasn't needed air conditioning. Hundreds of people died. Since then, major cities in Oregon and Washington have been working to get AC to people who need it. But as OPB's Monica Samayoa reports, there are still gaps.
MONICA SAMAYOA, BYLINE: Dawna Burnett is walking down a busy Portland neighborhood with her oxygen tank. She pauses under the shade of a tree to take a break from the heat.
DAWNA BURNETT: Oh, I've heard it's going to get really hot. And when you don't have air, it's worse.
SAMAYOA: For Burnett, the heat is exasperating. She's in her 60s and needs oxygen after recently having surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. The heat makes it harder for her to move around. But she remembers a time when it was so hot inside her home, she thought she was going to die.
BURNETT: It was 125. I didn't think I was going to survive. I stayed in my bathtub.
SAMAYOA: Burnett's talking about the heat dome that scorched the Pacific Northwest five years ago. Temperatures reached as high as 116 degrees in Portland. It was one of the hottest places in the country.
PAUL LOIKITH: If a bunch of mad scientists came together to design the worst heat wave ever, this is probably what they would have designed.
SAMAYOA: That's Paul Loikith. He's the associate professor of weather and climate at Portland State University. He says different weather patterns combined to create a record-breaking heat dome, but there was one factor that made this event much worse.
LOIKITH: Climate change made the event more severe by a couple of degrees, roughly.
SAMAYOA: The continued burning of fossil fuels like oil and gas contributes to climate change, which makes extreme weather like heat waves much worse. Loikith said the likelihood of such an extreme event happening again is low, but...
LOIKITH: If it happened once, that means that it's possible.
SAMAYOA: Back then, more than 100 people died due to heat-related illnesses in Oregon. Many of those people were found home alone with no AC. John Wasiutynski is the sustainability director for Multnomah County, where Portland is. He says among those who died, the common denominator was a lack of access to air conditioning.
JOHN WASIUTYNSKI: If people had access to cooling and an ability to give their bodies a break from the relentless heat, then they would have likely survived.
SAMAYOA: According to the county, about 80% of people in the Portland area had access to some level of AC, but that still leaves a lot of people vulnerable. Oregon created programs that provided financial incentives to install heat pumps. Portland distributed free AC units to vulnerable residents. More than 40,000 cooling devices have been distributed across the state since that big heat event. But according to Wasiutynski, there are still gaps statewide.
WASIUTYNSKI: We still have many households who lack air conditioning and are at risk from extreme heat.
SAMAYOA: He says state programs ran out of funding, and lawmakers haven't yet set aside more money for them. Oregon also lost millions of dollars of federal funding after the Trump administration rescinded grants aimed at climate action. Wasiutynski says that makes it especially difficult for vulnerable populations.
WASIUTYNSKI: And I think it's magnified, especially, in households that might be linguistically isolated in addition to, you know, having low income or have other barriers to accessing resources.
SAMAYOA: After experiencing the brutal heat dome without an AC, Dawna Burnett knew she had to make changes to adapt to a new reality, more hot days. She found a program that offered her an air conditioning unit.
BURNETT: I feel thankful because I could have very well died.
SAMAYOA: Since then, whenever the weather forecasts high temperatures, Burnett makes sure her neighbors have a safe place to cool down. For NPR News, I'm Monica Samayoa. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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