Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago
The “compelling” story behind the 1995 Chicago weather disaster that killed hundreds—and what it revealed about our broken society (Boston Globe). On July 13, 1995, Chicagoans awoke to a blistering day in which the temperature would reach 106 degrees. The heat index—how the temperature actually feels on the body—would hit 126. When the heat wave broke a week later, city streets had buckled; records for electrical use were shattered; and power grids had failed, leaving residents without electricity for up to two days. By July 20, over seven hundred people had perished—twenty times the number of those struck down by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Heat waves kill more Americans than all other natural disasters combined. Until now, no one could explain either the overwhelming number or the heartbreaking manner of the deaths resulting from the 1995 Chicago heat wave. Meteorologists and medical scientists have been unable to account for the scale of the trauma, and political officials have puzzled over the sources of the city’s vulnerability. In Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg takes us inside the anatomy of the metropolis to conduct what he calls a “social autopsy,” examining the social, political, and institutional organs of the city that made this urban disaster so much worse than it ought to have been. He investigates why some neighborhoods experienced greater mortality than others, how city government responded, and how journalists, scientists, and public officials reported and explained these events. Through years of fieldwork, interviews, and research, he uncovers the surprising and unsettling forms of social breakdown that contributed to this human catastrophe as hundreds died alone behind locked doors and sealed windows, out of contact with friends, family, community groups, and public agencies. As this incisive and gripping account demonstrates, the widening cracks in the social foundations of American cities made visible by the 1995 heat wave remain in play in America’s cities today—and we ignore them at our peril. Includes photos and a new preface on meeting the challenges of climate change in urban centers “Heat Wave is not so much a book about weather, as it is about the calamitous consequences of forgetting our fellow citizens. . . . A provocative, fascinating book, one that applies to much more than weather disasters.” —Chicago Sun-Times “It’s hard to put down Heat Wave without believing you’ve just read a tale of slow murder by public policy.” —Salon “A classic. I can’t recommend it enough.” —Chris Hayes
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Though not a disaster book per se, Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago fits right alongside many of the best scenario/incident-specific disaster books out there. This book doesn't have the narrative flair of, say, Five Days at Memorial, but it is equally poignant and very telling as to what makes an extreme weather event a “disaster.”
The ingredients for disaster are all around us, and they're woven into the fabric of our communities. The age and maintenance status of infrastructure systems is known. Ditto the differences in experience of urban and rural communities. And while “social vulnerability” is another known ingredient, Klinenberg helps us to realize that there's more to it than just dropping people into social vulnerability buckets: age, poverty status, transportation access, race, etc.
How do social vulnerability variables interact and overlap?
Who are these people, and what type of support do they really need?
What can a public sector entity do?
As you read Heat Wave, you can't help but think about the evolution of the modern community. The patterns of interaction, in/out migration, spatial need, etc., that built our cities aren't the patterns that prevail today. To be connected means something in today's world that was unfathomable when the primary way to be connected was by being in touch with (and often close to) family or being outside in your neighborhood. When you think of that, what makes a neighborhood? The physical has long given way to the notional. And with that, a need to re-envision physical spaces emerges.
Growing up and living in a rural area (albeit one with a robust enough transportation infrastructure to be within striking distance of several cities), I've always been fascinated by the pockets of community that exist in cities. My hometown wasn't big enough to have physical areas settled by immigrants from common areas of the world. It's in those pockets where place and personal identity are intertwined, and though in another space I could list the many things that are great about small communities, that place attachment is just different in cities. Heat Wave dissects that notion and prods us to look at the preparedness, response, and resilience implications.
Finally, what review written in 2023 would be complete without a nod to the themes from the book that we say play out during the COVID-19 pandemic? Widespread denial, fact bending, framing, definitional smoke and mirrors, scapegoating, deflecting...should we be comforted or abhorred that none of that stuff was new and unique to the pandemic?
Klinenberg is most successful at helping his readers question “What is a disaster?” Considering the social fabric of a community is an important step at understanding how a disaster might unfold in one's community.
