The Tyee Podcast: Extreme Heat Anxiety Is Rising

Note: Episode transcripts may contain errors. Always check the corresponding audio before quoting any part of the transcript.

Harrison Mooney:
I have to confess, I'm not looking forward to summer.

I used to look forward to summer when I was a kid, but I'm a dad now, so summer is different. More childcare, less time off, and more troubling memories of extreme weather, most notably the heat dome of 2021 in the Fraser Valley.

Temperatures climbed to 40, the town of Lytton caught on fire. There were honestly moments that felt like society fully collapsed.

Like a lot of British Columbians. I flinched when I heard the reports from Environment Canada that 2026 projects to be among the hottest years on record.

I'm anxious. The short term solution, I suppose, is to talk about it with somebody, and I know just who that should be.

This is the Tyee Podcast. I'm your host, Harrison Mooney. Every episode, we dive deeper into the stories shaping the West Coast, because Canada needs more B.C.

From covering climate disasters to the impacts of wildfire smoke on your body, Tyee health reporter Michelle Gamage knows how perilous summers in B.C. have become, and she joins me after the break.

[music]

Harrison Mooney:
Michelle, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing?

Michelle Gamage:
Hi, Harrison. I'm good. I love that we're talking about heat today, because I've been cold all morning, but I know that the climate disaster summer of horror will be with us here so soon, so I'm trying to savor it while it lasts.

Harrison Mooney:
So, you're staying cool? I'm losing it a little bit over here. Are you as nervous about temperatures this summer as I am?

Michelle Gamage:
Yes, yes, I'm terrified. I am terrified that we're going to have something like we did in 2021 but slowly, and I hope surely, we are having a bit of a public shift where we're starting to recognize the extreme danger that heat is, and the better prepared we are for it, the better we respond to it. The fewer people have to die.

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, were you here in 2021 for the heat dome?

Michelle Gamage:
I was. Yes, like many people, I suffered through it. I survived, and was lucky enough to survive quite comfortably, I'll say. I live in an older building. There's no AC, but we could pull heavy curtains across the windows, and then just sit drinking a lot of cold water throughout the day with fans on us, spritzing ourselves with water.

Yeah, I just remember trying to work that day and finishing work and just feeling ill, and biking down to the beach, to Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver, and finally getting in the water, and the water was like this gross bathtub warm, and it just was like, is there no escape from this?

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, I kind of assume like my plan this time is just to get in the water, but I forgot that the water was also gross and warm, and didn't really do it for you, huh?

Michelle Gamage:
Yeah, we had a really low tide during the heat dome. There was just so many things that went wrong. It also happened exactly like basically on the summer solstice, which is the longest days, the shortest nights, so no cooling off period. There were so many things that just were catastrophically wrong. Main one being we really didn't recognize heat as dangerous extreme weather.

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, we definitely do now. Yeah, and sometimes I get the sense outsiders don't understand quite how traumatic that was for British Columbians. I know you mentioned once talking to some Australians who were, I think, a little bit surprised by how surprised we were by the heat.

Michelle Gamage:
Yeah, I also remember hearing when Texas got a cold snap and a bunch of people died, and it was like, but it wasn't that cold, right? And it's, you like, we have to remember that humans are very, we're very delicate creatures, we exist in this very like small range of temperature, and we've built these built environments around us to be able to survive in extreme temperatures, but if we don't have the proper built environment, then we are very vulnerable to extreme weather, and we saw that here in B.C.

The best way I think that I've heard it explained is anyone who has access to cool indoor temperatures is not at risk from extreme heat, but we don't have a lot of people who have access to cool indoor temperatures here, because of how we've built our homes, because of how we've built our workplaces, because of, just how we approach work and work outdoors.

And so when you have extreme heat, and we have just, for example, lots of people living in social housing that doesn't have AC, that has big windows, that lets the sun in, that has like really no way to cool off, then you have these catastrophic outcomes, like the 2021 heat dome, where 740 British Columbians were killed.

Harrison Mooney:
You know, you're my go-to for medical stuff. Can you talk about what happens to your body in extreme heat?

Michelle Gamage:
Yes, and let me preface this by saying I'm not a doctor, and I'm gonna go over some just info that everyone can look up on their own. So, I would highly recommend everyone check out B.C.'s Extreme Heat Preparedness Guide. You can just Google that. If you Google, ‘How do I prepare for extreme heat in B.C.’, you'll probably find it. And Emergency Info B.C. lists cooling centers in your area. Both of those are really important resources. But let's start with what happens when we get too warm. In Canadians, we're very familiar with being too cold. We shiver, and if we stop shivering, that means it's really, really bad with extreme heat. What happens is our body will sweat, and it will try to cool itself. And what happens, the extremely dangerous situation is when the body stops being able to cool itself down, that is called hyperthermia.

Harrison Mooney:
Hyperthermia.

Michelle Gamage:
Yeah, opposite of hypothermia, which says your body can't warm itself up. Hyperathermia, you can't cool yourself down. So, to cool yourself down, your body sweats and it flushes its skin. When you get too warm, those systems no longer work, or when you get too dehydrated or something, so there's kind of a scale of how we explain injury from extreme heat, so sweating, being flushed, being kind of tired, being kind of grumpy, all of those things are okay. But you get to what we call mild to moderate heat exhaustion when you start experiencing things like headache, dizziness, nausea, pale, cool, moist skin, irritability. You can have dry mouth, a fast heart rate, heavy sweating. Pay attention to how much you're peeing, because if you're peeing less or peeing really dark, that means your body's not getting enough liquid into it.

Harrison Mooney:
I always pay attention to how much I'm peeing.

Michelle Gamage:
I appreciate you for that.

Harrison Mooney:
Thanks, thanks.

Michelle Gamage:
Yeah, this can include fainting, but it's still like mentally alert, and if you have a thermometer to stick in your mouth or your rectum, you can check. An internal temperature of up to 38 degrees, that's going to likely be a mild to moderate heat exhaustion. The warmer you get, and once again going back to how delicate humans are, really one degree warmer Celsius, if you're getting to 39 degrees or warmer, we are now definitely in fever temperature, and this is where a lot of danger can happen. This is called severe heat exhaustion, and severe heat exhaustion is getting to the area of emergency.

So, if you stop sweating, if you are confused, like unusual confusion is a symptom of this, decreased mental alertness, severe nausea, and/or vomiting, fainting, racing heart rate, rapid, shallow breathing, difficulty speaking, or unusual coordination problems. Once again, peeing. If you stop peeing, or you have extremely dark urine, this can all be signs of heat stroke. And heat stroke is a medical emergency. This is something that you call 911 for.

Harrison Mooney:
Right,

Michelle Gamage:
So this is when your body has lost the ability to cool itself down, and this is when people can die. The really nasty kind of scary thing about heat injury like this is that it's going to be kind of different for everyone, and it's going to radically change throughout your life.

Harrison Mooney:
Right. Okay.

Michelle Gamage:
So babies and younger children, they are at higher risk because they, they don't sweat as much, and they're smaller, they're not as good as like cooling themselves down.

Harrison Mooney:
Right, and they're always confused.

Michelle Gamage:
And not, not very coordinated.

Harrison Mooney:
They can't tell you anything.

Michelle Gamage:
And then as you get older, you could have maybe survived some temperatures, like last year or five years ago, and that's not really gonna have any say of how you respond to it today, right? Okay, so sometimes, like remembering, like, well, I've done this before, that doesn't actually really have anything to do with how you can do it now.

Harrison Mooney:
Right? I've stopped peeing before, this is fine.

Michelle Gamage:
Exactly, and there's all of these just other things that start to feed into it. So for example, if you're disabled, disabled bodies are affected by heat at lower temperatures, if you have other health conditions, for example, heart conditions, COPD, Parkinson’s, heart failure, chronic kidney disease, ischemic strokes, substance use disorder, mental illness. So, schizophrenia puts you at much higher risk, and that’s actually not anything to do with the disorder itself, but the medication that people usually..

Harrison Mooney:
Oh, yeah, I was gonna say, what does it have to do with?

Michelle Gamage:
So, certain medications can impact your body’s ability to cool itself off to understand how warm it’s getting, or to… No, blanking on the last one there. But it's important if you take any medications, just to talk to your doctor or your pharmacist ahead of the hot season, just be like, ‘Hey, should I be aware of any of these?’

Harrison Mooney:
Right? Should I mute the microphone and tell you all the medications I'm on to see if they're on the list?

Michelle Gamage:
Harrison, I'm not a pharmacist; I'm not a doctor.

Harrison Mooney:
You keep saying you're not a doctor, and I keep coming to you with all of my medical concerns.

Michelle Gamage:
And the list of high risks continues. So, being on income assistance more than doubles your risk of dying during extreme heat.

Harrison Mooney
Okay, explain that one.

Michelle Gamage:
So, this one is going to be more linked to how we house poor people.

Harrison Mooney
Right.

Michelle Gamage:
So, if you live in a nice, lush, leafy neighborhood that has like pools in the backyard, and it’s got lots of nice shade and heavily trees, yeah, everyone’s likely got some heat pumps, you know, keeping their houses nice and cool, good like air ventilation through their big windows and stuff. They’re not going to be at risk of extreme heat versus just the classic, let’s pull up the Downtown East Side. You have very closely packed, very small buildings. It’s all cement and brick. There’s just no shade, no way for people to cool off, and no awnings or anything like that. So sun is just going to come beating into those small apartments, and that’s just going to put everyone at much higher risk.

Harrison Mooney:
Right? Yeah, because I have, I have access to AC at home, and I’ve got access to AC here at the office, and some places I can go, I can hide out from this in my, in my safe spaces, but yeah, that’s not the case for everyone.

When we come back, from seniors to migrant workers, more ways that the most vulnerable in our society are most at risk in extreme heat. Stay with us.
[music]

Michelle Gamage:
And let's also talk about seniors. So, seniors might have fixed income, might live in, like, less cool housing, and also are going to have mobility challenges, and so maybe a safety tip is just get out of the house, go to a cool park, or get into a cool shower. Well, what if they're not able to do that? What if they’re on medications that impacts how they experience temperature, how much they drink, or how they experience thirst?

All of these things can put you at higher risk, and so I think the complexity of how many people are at risk have probably impacted a little bit why we don’t have regulations around heat, but at the same time it maybe underlines the importance of having some kind of government response to heat or some kind of safety needs, because this expectation that everyone will understand how heat impacts them individually isn’t really fair,

Harrison Mooney
Right. What do you mean regulations around heat? Because obviously you can’t just tell the environment to not be so hot, like what are the regulations that that we could have, should have, do have? My mind went just totally in the wrong direction with regulations around heat, and I want to know what the right direction should have been.

Michelle Gamage:
There are actually regulations around indoor temperatures, but they’re not accessible for lower-class people. So new houses that are built, new buildings that are built, they all have regulations over how hot the building is allowed to get, or they require at least one build, one room in the home to be kept below 26 degrees Celsius.

Harrison Mooney:
Right, the cool room.

Michelle Gamage:
Or have the capability of keeping it below 26 degrees Celsius. Yes, they have a cool room, and that's great. But what about all the people who are at actual risk? And it’s not to say that higher-income folks aren’t, but what about the people who don’t have access to things like air conditioning because they can’t afford it? What about people who work outside? What about thinking like migrant farm workers. I’m thinking servers who work on patios, and I'm thinking construction workers. These are three industries that are hugely at risk. And saying, well, that new home that we built is cool, haven’t we done enough? No, because none of these safety regulations are retroactive, and that’s a huge part, but also would be a huge undertaking to try and implement something that was retroactive.

Harrison Mooney:
I want to ask about migrant workers, you know, I mean, they're, they're out in the heat, and everything I hear is that conditions are not great for this particular labour force at the best of times. Heat dome, extreme heat, that's got to be the worst of times. What can you tell me about migrant workers?

Michelle Gamage:
Yeah, migrant workers in particular, I'll also say construction workers, but really, really migrant workers in particular are just getting horribly, horribly beaten up by extreme heat, so a lot of the time they'll, they'll live on the farms they're employed at, and the housing that is provided is really, really, really substandard.

So, chatting with the Worker Solidarity Network, they said that they were visiting people during the heat dome and just taking temperatures of what the, what the temperature was inside their housing, and there was one place where they recorded the housing was more than 60 degrees Celsius inside, and the workers were working right next to a wildfire…

Harrison Mooney:
Right next to a wildfire.

Michelle Gamage:
Yeah, and when, when the, when the temperature is that high, people are obviously going to not sleep inside, they're going to grab some blankets and sleep outside, which means you're going to get that much more exposed to the wildfire smoke, and it's just a, it's a really nasty combination.

And then there's also supposed to be a WorkSafe B.C. rules where people who are exposed to smoke for, for the work get access to PPE things like N95. But once again, chatting with the Worker Solidarity Network, who was actually out there talking with workers, they've told me that the inspections by WorkSafe B.C. are a joke. So they know when the inspector is going to come, and quickly a bunch of employees will be given masks. An inspector who doesn't speak, who only speaks English, will show up. They don't speak Spanish, they don't speak Vietnamese, and they will just kind of talk to the managers. The managers say it's great, look at all the people with masks, and then the inspector leaves, and I was told the workers get to go back to wearing $1 masks or no masks at all.

Harrison Mooney:
I don't actually have anything else to say to that. That's the answer to that. While we're talking, though, you know, this is my version of a fun fact. Extreme heat is actually one of the things that turbocharged the transatlantic slave trade, especially in Brazil. The workers that, you know, that were there originally would die after about an hour, or not an hour, die after about a year of working in that extreme heat, and then what the colonizers discovered was that people from West Africa managed to survive about four years on average, and so they phased out all the other labour forces and just went all in on West African labour in the tropics and in the Caribbean and pretty much everywhere else that they were growing sugar cane and whatnot, with just no concern whatsoever for the long-term well-being of any of these folks, and it is just, it's remarkable to learn that that's really still just happening.

Michelle Gamage:
Some concessions have been made where migrant workers are allowed to start working earlier, so they might get up at three or something, and then they're not in the very peak sun, but yeah, it's going to be an ongoing challenge because we grow food only really in the summer. So we need to start paying attention to the people who are invisible, and what we're doing now is just completely unacceptable.

Harrison Mooney:
You know, around these parts. Summer is wildfire season nowadays, and, like, I want to say I'll never get used to it, but honestly, in some ways, I think that we have all gotten used to it. I think it was August 2018 when there were over 500 active wildfires burning in B.C. alone at the same time, and eventually all that smoke poured into Vancouver, and the sky changed color, and the weather app stopped saying weather, it just said ‘smoke.’ You remember that? It was just ‘smoke.’ What does that level of smoke do to somebody's body?

Michelle Gamage:
It's also bad.

Harrison Mooney:
I thought that, I thought you might say that it’s also bad.

Michelle Gamage:
So I want to, I want to kick off talking about smoke, to say if you are overheating, and there's the difference between you have kind of an option to stay where you are and overheat, or go outside and be really smoky, prioritize cooling off before having access to clean air. Ideally, you can do both, but overheating will kill you now. Exposure to a lot of smoke will hurt you a lot, probably, as you live a long life.

Harrison Mooney:
Right? It'll get you later.

Michelle Gamage:
Yeah, but cool off first. Okay, so that's, that's very important. there's no safe level of exposure to wildfire smoke, none. So if you smell it, that's bad.

Harrison Mooney:
That's not great to hear.

Michelle Gamage:
It's not great to hear. Yeah, smoke, smoke gets in your, your lungs, it gets in your respiratory system, and it causes an immune response, because you get tiny particulates in your lungs, you get tiny particulates in your blood system, and your body responds by creating inflammation. And so when you get a sore throat, when you get a headache, this is because your body is actually responding and causing swelling, and that's not great. We don't love that.

Smoke can make it harder for your lungs to get oxygen, and it can increase the risk of infections like pneumonia or from COVID, and it can cause shortness of breath, severe cough, dizziness, chest pain, and heart palpitations. And once again, this is just really going to depend on how healthy each individual is to how much exposure impacts them, but it's not great. None of it is great.

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, you're stressing me out a lot. Luckily, I know that you, you, or you're always stumping for emergency preparedness. So now that I'm stressed out, I think maybe it's time to talk about what maybe we can do.

Michelle Gamage:
Can I stress you out a tiny bit more first?

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, absolutely.

After the break, Michelle Gamage continues making me nervous about how we're all going to survive this summer, but also offers some hope for what we can do to keep ourselves and our neighbors cool.

[music]

Michelle Gamage:
So, for anyone who's like, oh, smoke, a little bit of a headache, that's fine. It's estimated 800 people die prematurely in Metro Vancouver every single year due to air pollution, and there was a study, a recent study, that Canada's 2023 wildfire season was linked to 82,000 deaths worldwide.

Harrison Mooney:
What do you mean linked to? How it's just, you know, comorbidities and all the various ways you said smoke can exacerbate problems you already have and get you?

Michelle Gamage:
So, there's deaths that are caused by cancer, that's caused by exposure to the smoke. People can have heart attacks because of exposure to the smoke. People can get infections like bronchitis because of the smoke, and it's things like this. So, it's not like you step outside, you take a breath, you drop dead, but it's this really insidious impact on your system.

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, I have experience with this. My mother-in-law was quite ill in the summer of 2018 and she was kind of just hanging on. She was like, I'm gonna live. And then when the smoke came in in August, she just stepped outside one day, saw it, and then said out loud, time to go. And then she, she decided to access MAID. She, she died before the smoke was gone, and it blew me away, because it, I mean, to me that seemed like a death caused by smoke, you know? I know that she had cancer, but the smoke was what did it in the end. So, yeah, I guess it doesn't surprise me that it gets seen a lot of different ways. I've seen that. That's my question. Can you answer my question? Great. Anyway, now that I'm truly horrified, and I'm remembering a sad thing, let's talk about emergency preparedness. Should I have a kit of some sort? Should I be freezing gallons of water? What should I be doing, Michelle?

Michelle Gamage:
Well, I'm so glad you asked, because there is actually a lot that you can do, and there's a lot that you can do really affordably, which I think is a good thing here. So, for smoke proper fitting N 95 or KN 95, I feel like, it hooking behind your ears rather than behind your head, that is going to protect you from a lot of wildfire particulate. So wildfire smoke usually comes and hangs around while we have hot weather. It comes in with high pressure systems, and then kind of gets stuck. So, wearing an N 95 during hot weather can feel uncomfortable, but it is a really great way to reduce your exposure.

And then another great way that you can address heat and smoke exposure is to go to a cooling center, which is usually also a clean air center. And so that's things like libraries, malls, usually movie theaters, and stuff like that. And once again, this would all be listed by your municipality, and also likely by the province. And they have really good just HEPA systems. And there's a local library that I go to, and it's cool. And when it's really, really smoky, even though I have an air purifier at home, I find about 20 minutes hanging out at a library, like, my headache clears. So I highly recommend going to places like that, but staying safe at home. I've got a list, and I'll go into these in a bit more detail. But first, stay hydrated, hang out, stay cool.

Harrison Mooney:
Ooh, I love to stay cool, and hang out.

Michelle Gamage:
Do less.

Harrison Mooney:
Oh, I love to do less. We love to do less.

Michelle Gamage:
And check on your neighbours.

Harrison Mooney:
Oh, yeah, that's okay. I can do that. I can do that.

Michelle Gamage:
Okay, let's start with staying hydrated. So, remember, your body cools off by sweating, which requires liquid, and by flushing blood to your skin to cool yourself off. Both of those require liquid to do so. Drink a lot of water. You don't have to be guzzling gallons and gallons, about one cup an hour minimum, is what an hour…

Harrison Mooney:
One cup an hour, minimum.

Michelle Gamage:
And it's important, especially when it's really hot, even if you're not thirsty, to still be kind of maintaining that. And you're looking for around three to four liters of water a day, but you will get there with just one cup an hour, so hopefully that's approachable. Trying to avoid caffeinated, really sweet or boozy drinks, those will all just slightly dehydrate you. And also, if you don't just love drinking water, try eating some fresh fruit or vegetables, they have lots of water in them.

There's different ways you can hydrate. Hang out in areas that are around 26 degrees or cooler, so indoor temperatures are considered safe if they are cooler than 26 degrees, 26 degrees and warmer is starting to be considered risky, especially for people who are more likely to be impacted by heat, and then anything that's 31 degrees Celsius or hotter is considered dangerous, especially for indoor temperatures, and a really important thing that just blew my mind. I had no idea about this, but 35 degrees or warmer, like a fan blowing at you, will not cool you off, and 40 degrees or warmer, a fan blowing at you will actually increase your temperature.

Harrison Mooney:
What? How does that work?

Michelle Gamage:
So it's kind of how you sweat, so you sweat, the moisture comes to your skin, and then it evaporates, which pulls heat away from your skin. When you have a fan blowing at you, there isn't really the chance to cool off on your skin and then have the evaporation happen, so it just blows hot air over your skin the whole time, and then when it's just constantly blowing hot air at you, the cooling effect just doesn't exist anymore.

Harrison Mooney:
Right? So it's just an air fryer at that point.

Michelle Gamage:
It's like a convection oven.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay, great. You have more stuff.

Michelle Gamage:
I have so much more stuff.

Harrison Mooney:
Can we do it in like a lightning round?

Michelle Gamage:
Okay, find the room that's coolest in your house and sleep in there; use AC and fans; close your windows against the sun; close the blinds against the sun; don't use things like stoves; turn off your electronics; a really affordable way to make a home air conditioner is to have just a pail of ice and blow a fan over top of it

Harrison Mooney:
Right, right. My wife did that during the last heat dome, because she had all these frozen gallons of water, and then she would put them in front of the fan, and then, and to me, it just seemed like big time MacGyver stuff. I was like, wow, I didn't realize that you could just blow ice at people.

Michelle Gamage:
You can blow ice at people. And then stay cool, like spritz yourself with water. If you sweat and your clothes get damp, you can hang out in damp clothes. It's actually really good.

Harrison Mooney:
I love to hang out in damp clothes.

Michelle Gamage:
You can put damp towels in the freezer, and then, whenever they're like cold to the touch, you can put it on your neck, in your armpits, or your groin, and that's going to seriously cool you off. And once it just stops feeling cold, take it off, put it in the freezer, take the other one out you had in there. Have two rotating.

Do less, do activities earlier in the day, or later in the day, just try to avoid the peak hours of sunshine, and checking in on your neighbors 3pm from 8pm are usually peak indoor temperatures. So, if you're getting off work because you work kind of a nine-to-five, that's a great time to go check on your neighbors. Check on a loved one who might be at higher risk to heat, and just checking them for any symptoms of heat stress or heat injury, and you know, take them to like a shady park, take them outside, take them somewhere cool to a cooling center, or just go sit in some water, go swimming.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay. Well, that was amazing. I listened to all of it, and I want to know, I want you to know that the main things that my brain has retained are ice fans and groin towels.

Michelle Gamage:
And fresh vegetables.

Harrison Mooney:
I mean, that one I just know the drink water, fresh vegetable stuff. I mean, I'll try. I will try. Thank you for your counsel. I'll try

Michelle Gamage:
Ice, fans and groin towels.

Harrison Mooney:
Groin towels, for sure. Yeah, I think in many ways we've been conditioned to think of climate change and even extreme weather conditions as personal problems, right? So, it's like, yeah, get your groin towels, get your ice fans, but this isn't just a personal problem, and you can't just fix it yourself. What is our government doing?

Michelle Gamage:
Not enough, not enough. And I've got a little shopping list for people who want to go politely but firmly yell at politicians.

Harrison Mooney:
Oh, yes. Tell me what I should say to politicians.

Michelle Gamage:
Okay, so at the municipal level, municipal governments tend to be the ones who set indoor temperatures. Most places in B.C. have minimum indoor temperatures that, for example, a landlord has to have. So, these are also the governments that could be setting maximum indoor temperatures that a landlord is allowed to have.

Municipal governments will also be running the cooling and clean air shelters, and what you can do is make sure that those shelters are accessible in hours and location. So it doesn't really matter if the cooling shelter is in the ritzier part of the city, is someone in the poor part of the city going to have like the energy and the wherewithal during the extreme heat to get their butt over there? So we need things that are open at the hours that people need them, and we need them in the locations that people who are most at risk from heat can access them.

At the provincial level, we can look at legislated indoor temperatures for workplaces. There's a, there's a group, the Worker Solidarity Network, who is trying to push for legislation for workplace heat limits of 27 degrees Celsius indoors, and for anyone who was working 12 hour shifts above 32 degrees Celsius — that's likely going to be outdoor workers, people in construction, migrant farm workers, or just farm workers — they want legislated access, one liter of cool water every hour. If the temperature is above 27 degrees Celsius, like a very short walk, less than 400 meters, to get to that water, and access to shade or air-conditioned spaces for work breaks.

We also need to update infrastructure, so we're talking electrical grids, roads, things like rail. All of these are at risk of extreme heat. And talking with public health officials, one of the things that they are most terrified of is back-to-back heat waves with a blackout in the middle of it. So, if we are dealing with all of this and suddenly we don't have fans and suddenly we don't have the ability to make ice, that's going to be that much more scarier.

Harrison Mooney:
Right?

Michelle Gamage:
We also need to be improving social housing, we need retroactive improvements, we need the places that people like rest and recover and sleep to be safe, and right now we don't have that. Then, at the federal level, see all three levels…

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah, I was hoping you were going to get there.

Michelle Gamage:
…We need to do something about this thing, this climate change writ large. So we need the government to cut emissions. We need, like, a country that transitions away from fossil fuels, because the more fossil fuels we use, the more fossil fuels we extract, more fossil fuels we sell, the more heat waves, the more droughts, the more extreme weather, wildfires, risk of crop failure, all of these, that's going to keep happening. So, there's your, there's your, there's your shopping list.

Harrison Mooney:
I love it. So, basically, overthrow the government at every level, is what you're saying.

Michelle Gamage:
No, just have people more…

Harrison Mooney:
Expect them to do what we elected them to do.

Michelle Gamage:
I mean, that would be nice.

Harrison Mooney:
Okay, okay. My last question to you, Michelle, when you came in, you said you were cold, but there's no ventilation or windows in this room. How are you feeling now?

Michelle Gamage:
I'm all riled up.

Harrison Mooney:
Yeah

Michelle Gamage:
I'm heated.

Harrison Mooney:
I mean, that's pretty much just the perfect, the perfect response. Yeah, thank you. This has been.. I don't want to say a lot of fun, because obviously I'm as anxious as I was when we started, but illuminating… maybe I'm sure that there's like a heat-based pun I should be making here, but I can't think of one. I'm mostly just stressed out about groin towels, to be honest.

Michelle Gamage:
I think it's good to be stressed, but the more we pay attention to it, the more we can prepare for it, and the less unaware we'll be caught when it happens.

Harrison Mooney:
Ah, that's good. Thank you so much, Michelle.

Michelle Gamage:
Always a pleasure.

Harrison Mooney:
Michelle Gamage is the health reporter here at The Tyee. You can find her writing on The Tyee at thetyee.ca

The Tyee is a nonprofit reader- and now listener-funded journalism organization, all of which is made possible thanks to the support of our Tyee builders.

We're in the midst of a drive to sign up 650 new recurring members by June 15. Head over to support.theTyee.ca to sign up, so we can keep publishing journalism in the public interest. That's support dot the t y e e.ca

Today's episode was hosted by me, Harrison Mooney. It was produced by Jacob Boon and engineered by Isaac Phan Nay. Our music is by Brian Binnema. Join us again in two weeks.