03-07-2025
Four years after the heat dome, does BC need an extreme heat czar?
At least 619 people died in the heat dome that broiled British Columbia four years ago. Most were seniors, and most died alone in their homes. Paramedics were pushed to the brink — there weren't enough ambulances to save those in need — as the most deadly environmental disaster in Canadian history unfolded.
Four years later, there is widespread recognition from municipalities, the provincial and federal governments that protecting people from extreme heat is crucial as climate change makes heat waves more common and severe. But while steps have been taken, plenty of work remains, and some experts say it's time to recognize the right to cool.
'We are in a much better place than we were at this time in 2021,' said Sarah Henderson, scientific director of environmental health services with the BC Centre of Disease Control and professor at UBC's School of Population and Public Health. 'That doesn't mean that we're as far as we need to go.'
Henderson said the province has taken coordinated and effective planning decisions around extreme heat, including identifying conditions under which to issue heat alerts or declaring extreme heat emergencies, and has put 'a real emphasis on the risks around indoor temperatures.'
The next major extreme heat planning step, she said, is coordinating across sectors like agriculture, transportation, utilities and, of course, health.
Dying from a brutal, oppressive heat is a terrifying death. When temperatures become dangerously high, blood vessels dilate to redirect blood flow from the body's core to the periphery to cool. But this can lead to not enough blood flowing to vital organs, which then begin to fail. Extreme, prolonged heat can also cause cell death, causing damage to vital organs like the heart, increasing the risk of cardiac arrest.
One medical study found 27 different ways extreme heat can lead to death, offering 'a worrisome glimpse into what a warming planet may have in store for us.'
'These aren't random misfortunes, they are evidence of what scientists have been talking about for decades. The climate is changing,' said Sarah Henderson, scientific director of environmental health services with the BC Centre of Disease Control.
Katia Tynan, manager of resilience and disaster risk reduction with the city of Vancouver, told Canada's National Observer the city is proactively responding to extreme heat. Since the heat dome, the city has rolled out grants to 14 separate organizations, including the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre Society, community centres and neighbourhood houses, to respond to extreme heat.
'During crises like extreme heat, people go to the places and people they know and trust to meet their needs,' Tynan said. 'So, these organizations work very hard behind the scenes to create these heat plans.' Those organizations also conduct wellness checks on seniors, provide cooling equipment and set up informal cooling spaces in their own facilities.
Tynan said the city has opened more cooling centres (40 are open today, compared to 30 in 2021), more misting stations, more water fountains, and has set up a program that has so far delivered 6,000 cooling kits to people (essentially a box holding a thermometer, spray bottle, cooling towel, gel freezer packs and information about extreme heat.)
Air conditioning should be a 'standard expectation'
These are policy responses to a memo to the mayor and council from the Vancouver City Planning Commission sent immediately following the heat dome, in July 2021, urging the city to 'save lives by addressing the municipal policy gaps between acknowledging the reality of the climate emergency and the policies necessary for people to survive it.'
That memo said without improving the city's response to extreme heat and poor air quality, it is more likely people will die. Policy decisions that disproportionately impact disabled, racialized and poor people have meant those with the least ability to stay safe from climate change are bearing the brunt of it, it adds.
City planning staff said responses would have to be tailored to the specific needs of different populations. Unhoused people need access to cooling stations. At the same time, cooling stations are not a viable solution for disabled or elderly people living at home because they should not be told to leave home to seek relief from the heat while heat alerts are warning them to stay inside, staff said.
One of the most challenging areas of improvement is air conditioning. Nationally, about 61 per cent of people have air conditioning. In British Columbia, once famous for its mild weather, that rate drops to 32 per cent.
'Please remember, at one time central heating and indoor plumbing were considered luxuries only available to the wealthiest,' the Vancouver city planning memo reads. 'It is time we make maintaining high indoor air quality and energy-efficient air conditioning part of our standard expectations of housing, just as we do toilets, bathtubs and heat.'
Provincial utility BC Hydro was offering free air conditioning units to lower-income people, and delivered 27,000 units in the past three years, but has exhausted its funding, the Vancouver Sun reported last month.
Henderson said air conditioning could be an important part of a suite of policy options, but other steps can be taken to cool buildings. Shaded windows, installed awnings, and even painting roofs white can all help nudge temperatures down.
Building codes and retrofits
In an interview with Canada's National Observer, Kelly Greene, BC's minister for emergency preparedness and climate readiness, pointed to updates to building standards for new homes requiring 'at least one living space within every unit to not go over certain temperature thresholds,' she said, as well as changes to residential tenancy regulations to allow renters to install AC units. But there are limits.
'Sometimes, there are genuine issues about electrical load that can't be overcome in an older building, but barring that … you are allowed to put in a free-standing air conditioning unit,' she said.
Tynan agreed access to cool, clean air in homes is important, and said Vancouver now requires new buildings to have cooling and air filtration. The city is also funding two retrofit projects: one aimed at rental buildings, the other for non-profit housing.
'The goal of these is to fully or partially electrify — so adding heat pumps and mechanical cooling electrical systems to 20 buildings in each of these pilots over the next couple of years,' she said. 'So, we are trying to address this gap around existing facilities as well, recognizing that people do need to have cooling in their homes to protect them from extreme heat.'
Kendra Jewell, the University of British Columbia's Centre for Climate Justice housing research project manager, was a renter in Vancouver during the heat dome, and said while there are many short-term and targeted solutions worth pursuing, it's time to take a more systemic approach and recognize that people have a 'right to cool.'
The right to cool, Jewell said, is a proposal outlined in a report published last week for policy-makers that recognizes cooling as a fundamental right rather than a privilege.
'You can't think about it as a series of isolated one-time policy fixes; it has to be a sustained political and social commitment that considers many different types of vulnerability,' Jewell said. 'One of the key findings of our research is that heat risk is systemic and intersectional.'
Jewell pointed to the finding that two-thirds of the heat dome deaths were seniors, saying it's a case study on how to think about vulnerability to extreme heat. A lot of the strategies to deal with extreme heat looked at why seniors were disproportionately at risk, and would point to underlying chronic health conditions as the answer. (The BC Coroner's report of the heat dome found heat deaths were higher among people with chronic diseases and more than 60 per cent of the deaths involved individuals who had seen medical professionals within the prior month).
To Jewell, that's a great evidence-based start, but it doesn't go far enough in understanding people's vulnerability. They said research indicates that looking at both physiological and social conditions is actually the most predictive of heat related risk.
'In the context of seniors, you can think about how things, like living on a fixed income or living alone, compounded that bio-medical risk,' they said. 'We can't think about age, poverty, social isolation or any other risk factor alone.
'We have to think about heat risk as systemic and intersectional, and we need our responses to be similarly multi-faceted so that they can reflect that.'
Extreme heat czar
Beyond the 619 people killed, the heat dome also eviscerated marine life, with an estimated billion marine animals killed along the Pacific coast. And the heat wave ushered the BC town of Lytton to its fiery end. After record-melting temperatures (49.6C) were recorded in the town, a wildfire soon swept in, reducing it to smouldering ashes.
None of this would have happened if not for fossil fuel-driven climate change, found a 2022 study published in Nature Climate Change from Columbia Climate School at Columbia University. Climate scientists are clear that until global greenhouse gas emissions stabilize, extreme weather like heat waves, droughts, floods and wildfires will continue to be more common and more severe.
The frequency of this extreme heat won't be evenly felt across Canada. By 2050, Ontario and Manitoba will have 1.5 times the number of days of extreme heat, while Yukon will be experiencing six times more extreme temperatures. By 2080, the average number of days above safe temperature thresholds in Canada will range from 75 to 100 days if emissions continue to climb — representing a lethal summer season. Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba and the Atlantic provinces are expected to have the most 'potentially deadly hot days annually,' reports the Canadian Climate Institute.
For Henderson, that's the key lesson from the heat dome. Extreme heat will happen again. It's just a matter of time.
'These aren't random misfortunes, they are evidence of what scientists have been talking about for decades. The climate is changing,' she said. 'So everything we can do to raise the bar on preparedness for next year and 10 years from now and 30 years from now, is going to pay dividends into the future.'
'One of the key things we don't have in the province right now, which we're seeing in other places, is for lack of a better word, an 'extreme heat czar,'' she said. 'We have lots of people who view this as part of their broader work, but nobody with dedicated responsibility to extreme heat.'
The benefit, Henderson says, is that priorities frequently shift based on the priorities of the day. If an individual were empowered to keep extreme heat as their focus, even when other disasters, like flooding or a pandemic, occur, further change to protect lives could be driven.
LNG ships
Greene said because BC's government recognizes more climate change-driven extreme heat and other disasters will continue to be more common, the province is taking steps.
She described an extreme heat emergency alert sent out to people through their phones, radios and televisions with information about how to stay safe; financial support to help communities open cooling centres, updating building codes for new buildings to require temperatures to not exceed certain thresholds; and providing funding for communities to plan for extreme heat through temperature mapping.
But she also acknowledged that rising global emissions will mean worsening climate disasters, including droughts, floods, wildfires and landslides.
'So it is important to continue to decarbonize our economy,' she said.
As the anniversary of the heat dome passes, British Columbia is witnessing another milestone: the first LNG ships to export natural gas to global markets — setting off the carbon bomb that is the Montney Play — had sailed.
'I know there is more work to do, and it's something that has to happen in tandem with protecting communities, protecting people from the effects of climate change,' Greene said. 'Realistically in the world, we're not going to be turning off fossil fuels tomorrow, there's no switch to turn off, and so this work continues to be important both in growing our clean economy and protecting communities.'
