PHOENIX — The Heat Relief Network across Maricopa County is hoping to reduce heat deaths by providing life-safe information to the most heat-vulnerable groups.
The ABC15 Investigators have been looking into the dozens of cooling centers after complaints about limited hours of operation at some centers.
We spent several days doing spot checks at different cooling centers across Maricopa County and found people being forced out of cooling centers that closed at 3, 4. and 5 p.m.
We talked to a woman, who goes by Stacey, who was seeking refugee from the heat at a cooling center in Phoenix before they closed at 4 p.m.
“There is very little shade to find outside,” said Stacey. “There’s very little relief from the heat.”
The YMCA Downtown location closed at 3 p.m. and when ABC15 arrived two minutes later we were told they were closed and that we could come back the next morning at 9 a.m.
Many of the libraries that are used as cooling centers in the City of Phoenix close at 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. depending on the days — they do not extend their hours as cooling centers in the summer months.
Burton Barr Central Library stays open until 7 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. South Mountain Community Library stays open the latest four days a week until 8 p.m. There is only one library that is open on Sunday.
For someone like Stacey, finding relief on the weekends is the hardest. “Weekends are very difficult,” she said. “It’s just still hot on the weekends, there’s nowhere to go.”
During our spot check of locations, we went to another cooling center that was on the heat relief map off Central Avenue near Steel Indian School Park and the people who worked inside told us she could stay for 10 minutes, but then would have to leave.
The ABC15 Investigators had questions for the Heat Relief Network around cooling centers but we found that there is no central organizer and there is little to no oversight as we found it is a loosely organized program made up of city and county partners, plus charities and churches.
We also found there are little to no rules around cooling centers except that individuals can not participate if it’s a private home. There are no rules around operating hours, capacity, services provided, or even how long individuals can stay.
Kelli Donley Williams is with the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG), a regional planning organization for cities, which volunteers their time to map all the cooling center locations. “We do this out of the goodness of our hearts because there is a need in the community and because we have the technology and the resources, and the desire to help others," she said.
ABC15 put together an interactive map that shows within the City of Phoenix where cooling centers are in the city compared to 911 dispatch calls for heat-related emergencies.
The information is reflected from January 1, 2023 to August 13, 2023. The dark red represents 76 or more heat-related incidents in the City of Phoenix.
You can see one zip code, 85029, in particular that shows one cooling center on the edge of a boundary. We also found that there were no cooling centers in zip code 85043, an area that is near Buckeye Road and has a lot of industrial buildings.
Despite no organization or municipality running the Heat Relief Network, we are told there is a request for one as it could help bring sustainable funding, coordination, and oversight.
“In terms of a particular agency that runs the Heat Relief Network overall, full-on coordination, there is not one yet,” said Reverend Katie Sexton-Wood, Executive Director for the Arizona Faith Network.
“The last two years it became very clear that we needed a coordinator position, a central government entity that would coordinate this from top to bottom,” Sexton-Wood added.
Cooling centers have been a focus during the extreme heat this summer and millions of dollars have gone into the efforts.
Maricopa County provided $3.8 million to fund heat relief partnerships for people experiencing homelessness. The funds were given to different cities for different reasons but several used the money towards cooling centers.
The county wrote in a news release, “City of Phoenix: $1,015,000 to open indoor, air-conditioned daytime heat relief shelters in downtown Phoenix and Sunnyslope to serve up to 140 individuals per day between May and September 2023.”
David Hondula, the city’s director of the Heat Response and Mitigation Office told ABC15 the Heat Relief Network could use federal support when it comes to hours, “support for overtime pay, for employees to keep the facilities open [until] 5,6,7,8 10 o'clock, what other supplies are needed for those facilities to make them more effective?”
There is some agreement on what’s missing from the Heat Relief Network. “There is the sustainable funding piece that is missing and then there is the personnel piece, the government entity that will oversee, that will implement, that will quality check, that will help guide what every cooling center should look like, and how we integrate into communication with another,” said Sexton-Wood.
There is a desire to help those seeking relief during the summer months. Grace Lutheran Church opens its doors and relies on its small staff and volunteers to operate as a respite center.
A respite center provides a cool shelter where people need to escape the heat by resting.
Pastor Dan Albertson with Grace Lutheran said they are doing what they can.
“We are a little bit short-handed with what we have,” he said, “If we had more personnel, if we had more employees to do this we could open at six in the morning and go all the way until 8 p.m.,” he said.
The Heat Relief Network has been used as a sample model for other jurisdictions across the country when it comes to different municipalities volunteering time to create a system.
As for the YMCA in Phoenix, it also says it is interested in trying to add staffing to extend its hours.
In a statement, the YMCA wrote in part:
"The goal is to expand the hours of the cooling and drop-in center from 9 am to 6 pm as a response to the excessive and unprecedented temperatures."
The Arizona Governor's Office stated it is aware of the concerns around cooling center coordination and wrote that is why it has instructed the State Health Department to work on proposals to, "centralize and formalize coordination for cooling centers and heat relief facilities into a network that can be relied on for years to come."
The ABC Investigators learned Thursday afternoon that the Arizona Department of Health Services is looking to create a new position that will serve as a statewide heat coordinator, which would include oversight of cooling centers.
The position is in the very early stages, but a spokesperson wrote by email, ADHS has identified funding to begin this critical position's recruiting and onboarding. We will continue to work with state leadership to ensure funding is identified and available in the long term.
