Last year's deadly heat wave in metro Phoenix didn't discriminate

PHOENIX (AP) — Priscilla Orr, 75, was living in her old white Kia in a supermarket parking lot last summer after telling her family she lost her money and home to a romance scam.

But the car broke down, and the air conditioner stopped working, leaving her vulnerable to the dangerous desert heat. Orr collapsed last July as she walked on the lot’s scalding asphalt, which registered 149 degrees Fahrenheit (65 C) as the air temperature topped the triple digits.

She was dead by the time paramedics arrived.

Orr was among over 400 people who died last year in metro Phoenix from heat-associated causes during a 31-day streak of sizzling days of 110 F (43.3 C) or higher that stretched from the last day of June through all of July.

That’s about two-thirds of 645 heat-related deaths confirmed from the whole year in Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and Arizona’s most populous county. No other major metropolitan area in the U.S. has reported such high heat-associated death figures.