Matt Barrow wrote:
One aspect is that for people outdoors (homeless, for example) cannot get
out of the heat during the day (shade doesn't work) nor at night (temps stay
high). I suspect that can add to a death toll.

Of course. And of course, I was talking about for *me*. I have lived
in the desert, where the temperatures routinely rose above 100 in the
summer. However the humidity was low enough that air conditioning was
not required (well, for ME at least). Then one July 4th, there was a
95 degree day with something like a HI of 105...That was one of the
worst days...I did run the AC that day. Not so much because it felt
like it was 105, but because if you didn't, you would lose 5 pounds in
sweat.

There's a wikepedia article on the July 1995 chicago heat wave that
reads, in part:

quote
Because of the nature of the disaster, and the slow response of
authorities to recognise it, no official "death toll" has been
determined. However, figures show that 739 additional people died in
that particular week above the usual weekly average. Further
statistical analysis analyzed by Eric Klinenberg (author of Heat Wave:
A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago) showed that blacks were more
likely to die than whites, and that Hispanics had an unusually low
death rate. This has been explained by the fact that many blacks at the
time lived in areas of sub-standard housing and were quite dispersed,
while Hispanics at the time lived in places with higher population
density. Thus demographics, rather than ethnic values, were shown to be
the reason for this disparity in deaths.
/quote

Note that I take wikepedia articles with a grain of salt; I don't know
the reference for the "figures" regarding the death toll, but it is
probably from the same book mentioned.