The Sonoran Desert will be among the hottest places on the globe for the next 4 months.  The heat on the desert floor isn’t just a nuisance, it’s expensive & lethal.  Do you know what to do to protect yourself and your family?  Do you follow through?

Year in and year out, nearly 1,400 Arizonans get heat related illnesses so serious that they end up in an emergency department.  Hundreds are so ill that they end up being admitted to the hospital.  In 2008, the average per-person hospital treatment cost for heat related illnesses in Arizona was about $7,500, leading to a whopping $11M in treatment costs.  And that’s not all.  On average, between 30 and 80 Arizona residents die from heat related illnesses every summer.  More than 70% of the illnesses, hospitalizations and deaths are guys.  Chris Mrela wrote a dynamite report on a couple of years ago.

The good news is that preventing heat related illness is easy to do if you just use common sense.  You can learn how to protect yourself from heat with some resources on our website including our Heat Brochure, Heat Related Illness Tips for Schools and our newly revised Heat Emergency Response Plan.