Heat Wave
As I shiver through a Chicago spring that resembles winter, it's hard for me to imagine how hot it got in California last summer, how terribly, deadly hot. But with her terrific story, "Silent Inferno," in the spring edition of Stanford Medicine Magazine, Tracie White vividly describes what it was like during that heat wave, which killed at least 138 people. White uses a narrative that shifts between the last day of one of the victims and the workers in the Fresno morgue who must handle the growing pile of corpses:
By Tuesday, the walk-in refrigerator had surpassed its capacity of 50 bodies, peaking at 67. Workers loaded the corpses onto gurneys two, sometimes three at a time. The stench of the dead permeated clothing, skin, then rose to the second floor as a silent reminder to those working in administration above of the carnage below. Hance went home after a 12-hour shift, showered for an hour, threw away all her clothes right down to her shoes and still couldn’t get the stink to go away.
Along with her narrative, White explores the trends contributing to the deaths, including global warming, increased urbanization and the social isolation of our burgeoning population of elderly people. I am grateful to the Nieman Narrative Digest for suggesting this great story. http://mednews.stanford.edu/stanmed/2007spring/heat.html