Pushkin.

Pushkin Hello everyone, just popping up before we start

to note the debt this episode owes to Eric Klinenberg's book, Heat Wave, which you'll

hear cited several times. It's the definitive account of the disaster we describe, and I couldn't

have written this episode without it. Klinenberg helped reframe what a natural disaster actually

is, and I've drawn extensively on his reporting and his thesis. A revised edition of Heat Wave

was published just a few years ago, I suggest you pick up a copy.

At half past three, on a Wednesday afternoon, the 12th of July 1995, Chicago's branch of

the National Weather Service issued an advisory. It was going to get hot.

No kidding. It's Chicago, in July. As a local TV weatherman put it, we saw the heat coming

for some time, but you were almost ridiculed when you'd say, hey, it's really going to

get hot, but it was really going to get hot. The temperature had already hit 97 degrees.

The next day, the first day, was worse. At midway airport, it was 106 degrees, and it was

humid like being wrapped in hot towels. It felt like 125 degrees. To have a temperature

of 104, and a dew point in the low 80s, a not-popper thunderstorm was pretty extraordinary, said

the weatherman. A thunderstorm's function in nature is to be the air conditioner.

Nature's air conditioners weren't working that week. There was no thunderstorm, nor was

there a cooling breeze from Lake Michigan to the north and east. Instead, hot, wet air

was slowly oozing over Chicago from the southwest. Stores sold out of air conditioners. This

is the kind of weather we pray for, said one appliance manufacturer. The lucky folk who

did have air conditioners turned them up to the max. Those who didn't, went to the beach

or a municipal pool. People took boat trips out onto the lake. Trips which were abandoned

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