Surviving the Great Indoors: The Pros and Cons of Living in an A/C World

There’s no doubt that air-conditioning can save your life, but as heat waves increase in the future, should we all be armed with A/C?

Eddie Slautas turned down his neighbors’ repeated offers to install a window air conditioner in his Chicago apartment. Even when they said they’d help him pay the difference in his utility bill, the 74-year-old demurred. “Why should I make my electric bill higher?” he asked. “The fan is good enough.” Then came a fierce midsummer heat wave. On the night of July 30, 1999, the neighbors found Slautas dead. The fan was running, blowing hot air across his body. He was one of 103 Chicagoans killed by the heat that week.

On the last night of July 2006, a Commonwealth Edison power cable running beneath the city of Chicago failed, putting 3,400 customers in the dark. The next day, as temperatures reached 100 degrees on the fifth day of a blistering heat wave, 1,300 people had to be evacuated from high-rise residential buildings in the area. Their apartments had become saunas, so they took refuge in air-conditioned shelters. Resident Lutricia Somerville, who had resorted to spending much of the night in her parked truck with the air conditioner running, told a reporter, “It’s just like Hurricane Katrina.” Those trapped in the heat must indeed have felt some of the desperation that had hit New Orleans residents 11 months earlier. But the outage was short-lived, and this time no one died or suffered serious medical problems.

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