![]() ![]() He was frustrated that the park’s bathrooms were locked, preventing him from even washing his hands. ![]() Robert Jefferson, 47, said he was willing to take his chances sleeping on the hot streets because being inside a shelter taxed his mental health. A regional planning agency has created online maps showing each location, but homeless people said their phones were often dead or easily fried in the heat. ![]() Phoenix says its heat-relief centers serve about 1,600 people a day, but several homeless people said in interviews that they did not know where to find a cooling center - or did not realize they even existed. Fifty feet away, in the full sun, a friend of theirs who had been using fentanyl had fallen asleep under a reflective windshield cover. He stopped beside a spit of grass near an interstate where six people were clumped in the meager shade of a mesquite tree. “It’s like walking around in a blow-dryer.” “Can you imagine being that hot and miserable?” he said. But he said he felt compelled to do something. He moved to Phoenix from Atlanta two months ago, and said he did not know whether his actions were actually helping. On Monday morning, as the temperature arced past 100 degrees, Jeffrey Elliott, 36, a volunteer with Feed Phoenix, a community group, heaved three water bottles and 100 pounds of ice into the back of his car and headed out to make his deliveries. As the climate warms, forecasters say that dangerous levels of heat crank up earlier in the year, last longer - often well past Halloween - and lock America’s hottest big city in a sweltering straitjacket. Summers in Phoenix are now a brutal endurance match. But no matter how much water or electrolyte solution she drank, her legs tingled and her head spun. Williams wore long sleeves, black gloves and a broad-brimmed visor with flaps covering her neck to deflect the sun as she walked her route. (On Wednesday, the temperature hit 110 degrees for the 13th straight day, with even hotter temperatures forecast for the weekend). She was questioning her move this week as the temperature hit 110 degrees for an 11th straight day on Monday, with no end in sight. Rachelle Williams was sick of delivering mail in Indiana winters, so in 2019, she put in for a transfer to Arizona and joined the flood of newcomers who have made Phoenix one of the country’s fastest-growing cities. ![]()
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