Seniors are migrating to states that face America’s most extreme heat

SUN CITY, Ariz. - It was 6:15 p.m., 110 degrees, the speakers were playing “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner and the seniors of suburban Phoenix were blissfully arm-pumping their way around the walking pool.

“Quite honestly, I’m good up to 110 now, you do acclimate,” said Bob Hirst, who decamped from northern Virginia two years ago with his wife, Vicky, to this 55-and-over community.

Despite the blistering evening, Ira Schneider was happily submerged in the hot tub, which was a relief of sorts at around 100 degrees. He’d lived in Phoenix for 22 years. To get him to return to his native New York, he said, “you’d have to scrape me off a cactus.”

Phoenix saw a record-breaking 19th consecutive day above 110 degrees on Tuesday. The extraordinary run of punishing heat poses a particular risk to the elderly, who are more likely to suffer from heart disease, diabetes and other health problems that make it harder to tolerate extreme heat. And while some retirees have the resources to cope with scorching temperatures, others remain much more vulnerable - even as demographic data shows that this group continues to gravitate to sunny and warm parts of the country that are in the crosshairs for extreme heat.

Phoenix first responders and medical personnel say they are worried about seniors who may be isolated and living without air-conditioning, or those who fall and can’t get up on days when the concrete and pavement can be so hot it’s deadly.

Many of the places that, in recent years, have become attractive destinations for seniors are among those most affected by the historic heat wave camped out over the southern United States, according to an analysis by The Washington Post of forecast data from the National Weather Service and migration data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Between 2008 and 2021, Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, has received more than 68,000 people age 65 or older - more elderly migrants than any county in the country, according to census data. For the past several weeks, Maricopa has also been one of the hottest counties in the United States. This weekend, its heat index - a measure of how hot it feels outside that includes temperature and humidity - averaged over 110 and is expected to climb as high as 117 this week.

Those trends converged in a particularly dangerous way on Sunday at an RV park for the elderly in Mesa, east of Phoenix. The power went out for dozens of homes at the Viewpoint RV and Golf Resort, according to residents, and stayed out for nearly 24 hours - a period when temperatures in the area reached 118 degrees.

Many who lost power moved to hotels or stayed with relatives as the temperatures inside their homes soared, residents said. Robert Steffen and his wife, Gretchen, took refuge at his son’s house in Chandler for the night. When they returned Monday morning, they said the temperature inside their home was in the mid-90s.

Some residents, including people in wheelchairs and with other health problems, spent the night in sweltering conditions, said Kathleen Noble, a homeowner in the community who is also a board member of the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home, RV & Park Model Owners.

“Park managers, especially for the elderly, need to have some kind of an emergency plan set up during these times of high heat,” she said.

The power came back on midday Monday, residents said. The park’s management office did not answer the phone and Equity LifeStyle Properties, which owns the RV park, did not respond to a request for comment.

The combination of rising electricity demand and surging heat could be disastrous. Recent research found that in a city such as Phoenix, blackouts during a heat wave could kill thousands of people.

Nationwide, extreme heat exposure among people age 69 and older could more than double by 2050, according to a study published in March. The research looked at the number of people who will experience heat waves as well as their frequency and intensity. It attributed the surge in exposure to a convergence of three factors: the population at large is aging; the population of older people is growing in the swath of southern states known as the Sun Belt; and average temperatures are increasing everywhere as Earth’s climate warms.

Those trends also mean many older people underestimate the threat of extreme heat, whether because they are new to a hotter region, or because heat is becoming more intense in parts of the country that have been traditionally cooler, said Deborah Carr, a sociology professor at Boston University and the study’s lead author.

Moreover, older people are more likely to have preexisting health conditions that make extreme heat harder to tolerate. Common medications for heart disease and high blood pressure are dehydrating and reduce the body’s ability to cool itself by sweating, something many people don’t take into account when considering their ability to withstand heat, Carr said.

“If someone has underlying conditions, it’s going to be worse,” she said.

Florida, another haven for snowbirds and seniors, is also broiling in the recent heat wave. Lee County, which includes Fort Myers, is home to more than 200,000 Americans 65 and older and is one of the most popular places for elderly migrants, recent census data shows. The heat index is expected to surpass 100 degrees this week in the county, driven in large part by extreme humidity.

Sitting barefoot in a chair with the front door of his motel room open on Saturday, Joseph Sull couldn’t ever remember being this hot. The 76-year-old has lived in southwest Florida for nearly 20 years, and is used to sweltering summers, but this year’s historic stretch of heavy humidity has been “brutal” and has prevented him from spending time outside, like he usually loves to do.

After Hurricane Ian totaled his mobile home last September, Sull has been living in a motel, along with a handful of other victims, most of whom are also elderly. For days on end, Sull has sat in his small, air-conditioned room, watching “nothing happening,” as he says.

This kind of oppressive heat has made his world much smaller, having made the few routines he has, like taking a walk, very uncomfortable to do.

“I can’t sit in here all day with the door closed. It drives me crazy,” he said. “I need the fresh air and want to look at something else besides these four walls. It’s hard.”

In Phoenix, doctors say they regularly see elderly patients who suffer from heat stroke and burns once temperatures surpass 100 degrees. Diabetic patients who suffer from neuropathy and can’t feel their feet sometimes walk out onto hot surfaces, suffering serious burns, they said. Nearly two-thirds of the 425 heat-associated deaths in Maricopa County last year were individuals age 50 or older.

Frank LoVecchio, an emergency medicine physician at Valleywise Health Medical Center in Phoenix, said he saw an elderly woman last week who had fallen from her wheelchair at her nursing home and couldn’t get off the hot patio.

“She was there for like five minutes maybe,” he said. “And she had third-degree burns.”

Phoenix firefighters who respond to heat distress cases say the elderly and the immunocompromised tend to be among the most vulnerable. They have responded to help elderly people whose homes get too hot because they won’t turn on air conditioning or don’t have any.

The health impacts of extreme heat are easier to discount than, say, the dangers of a tornado or hurricane because they aren’t as readily apparent, said Peter Howe, a professor at Utah State University. Authorities usually know soon after a storm how many injuries or deaths it caused, but it often takes much longer to determine the toll of a heat wave, he said.

“We can do retrospective studies several months to years later, but we don’t really have good real-time data,” Howe said.

Migration to the Sun Belt, which air conditioning helped enable over the past half century, is still increasing as people seek out milder winter weather, said Albert Saiz, director of MIT’s Urban Economics Lab. At the same time, high costs and housing scarcity are driving people away from the Northeast and other regions, he said.

“It’s both a pull and a push,” he said.

Scott Dudlicek, a claims manager for a technology company, left Chicago after 54 years and moved to Sun City outside Phoenix in the summer of 2019.

“I came down on a visit for a work conference and said, ‘I’m tired. I’m done with the snow and the cold,’” Dudlicek recalled. “It was 113 when we were down here. I loved it.”

When he returned to Chicago it was 90 percent humidity, he said, and he was soon drenched through his shirt.

He told his wife: “That’s it. We’re moving.”

“And we were down here a year later.”

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Morton and Dance reported from Washington. Sacks reported from Iona, Fla. Caitlin O’Hara in Sun City contributed to this report.