Heat Wave in Chicago

This week is the 10 year anniversary of the heat wave in Chicago that left hundreds dead. I was there. I wrote a post about it a while back which I have re-printed below. Thanks for the reminder, Ann Marie. What a week that was. A nightmare. I remember every second. Especially how heavy the air was.

Chicago Extremes: Heat

In July of 1995 there was a heat wave in Chicago. Relatively famous because of the number of deaths that resulted. Not as much as what happened last summer in France, but it was HUGE. (more info here if you’re interested – I think a book was written about it too) I remember the air being filled with the sound of sirens during the days after the temperature dropped (to a balmy 101 degrees). 739 people died over a 5 day period. Jesus. It was terrible.

Anyway, I was there. Obviously I did not die, but I went through it. So here’s what happened. Again, there are many tangents, because that’s how my mind works, and because I like to write them.

The Hot Extreme
It was July of 1995. The beginning of July was relatively normal summer weather – 70s and 80s. I looked up the temperature chart of that month –

July 7 81
July 8 84
July 9 85
July 10 90
July 11 90
July 12 98
July 13 106
July 14 102
July 15 99
July 16 94
July 17 89

The temperature just kept going up and up and up.

A lot was going on for me during the summer of 1995. I was doing a production of James Agee’s A Death in the Family – an award-winning production. I was having a great time with it.

I also was preparing myself to leave Chicago at the end of August. I had gotten into graduate school in New York City and so – I was getting ready to say good-bye. I loved Chicago. I had a real life there. I had a ton of friends. A real community. I was leaving all of that, and I was dreading it. Even though going to grad school is a good thing, I knew that my life in NYC would not have the same feel as my life in Chicago. I was right.

So I was a bit of an emotional mess. Random crying as I looked at Lake Michigan, doing pilgrimages to all my favorite places, taking a ton of pictures …

It was a blessing to be doing such a GOOD solid show – I had performed in a lot of crap during my time in Chicago – and while being in a bomb definitely has its comedic element and is enjoyable in a kind of masochistic way (especially if the rest of the cast knows it’s a bomb, too, and you can all make fun of it, collectively) – it can’t hold a candle to being in something that people love, that gets good reviews – We played to full houses every night.

I was living on Wayne Street, again with my friend Mitchell – and another guy, Ken. I loved that apartment. It was a couple blocks away from Wrigley Field, and right behind the Music Box theatre on Southport. Mitchell and I would go see midnight shows of Casablanca and stuff like that.

It was a great apartment – but it had no air conditioning.

I was also working – again as a temp – at this HUGE international company down in the Loop. The building was right on the Chicago river – across from the Opera House.

The heat started getting a bit out of control. Everyone started talking about it. The record-breaking heat also was accompanied by very high levels of humidity. So everything started becoming semi-unbearable. The theatre where I was working was, obviously, air-conditioned, as was my job, but at home we were screwed. I took cold baths and then sat directly in front of a fan in my room. Sometimes I would take 3 baths in one night.

On the couple of hottest days – things started raging out of control.

Rumors started flying – that a couple of guys on construction crews had died, because their bosses made them continue to work, outside.

I would emerge from my job – and the heat was not just a temperature-thing, it was as though it was a heavy hot blanket – draping over my limbs – my face – Immediatley, the second you stepped outside, it became hard to breathe. You had to concentrate on it. Okay … breathe in … take it slow …

I don’t know on which of the hottest days the entire city of Chicago lost power. Everyone obviously turned on their air-conditioning units at the same time, and the city was plunged into blackness.

I can’t remember where I was when the power went out – but I wasn’t home. Someone drove me home, through blackened streets – and it looked and felt like the apocalypse had arrived. The streets were packed with people, people trying to get a little relief, looking for that one breath of cool air. Ambulances were EVERYWHERE, their sirens lighting up the dark – but they had to drive extremely slowly and cautiously – no street lights – no stop lights – and so there became a backlog. Lines of stalled ambulances, sirens shrieking, lights flashing … but not going anywhere.

And people started dying. It was mostly poor people and elderly people who died.

Because of this heat wave in 1995, Chicago put into place a volunteer task force who, when it became very hot, would knock on people’s doors, explain the dangers of the heat to them, and take them to air-conditioned community centers.

Chicago became a mad-house. A morgue in motion. Refrigerated trucks, ambulances …

I would walk down to do my show. I felt as though I were swimming, as though the air had become tangible, fluid. The atmosphere pressed on the lungs.

The air itself burned.

One of those nights when we had no power – I turned onto my street to come home into my black hot apartment. The street was lined with cars and I noticed something odd: all the motors were running. It sounded like it was the parking lot after a wedding reception or something. As I walked to my door, I glanced in the cars – and they were all filled with people – just hanging out in their air-conditioned vehicles. I saw couples having picnics. I saw entire families sprawled out throughout their cars. People doing crosswords, I saw wine bottles, I heard faint music …

Can I tell you how much I wanted to knock on one of their car doors and say, “Got room for one more?”

No electricity, no air-conditioning, shrieking sirens filling through the air. All I could do was draw another freezing cold bath and sit in the tub sponging myself off.

Heat like that was another animal. Again, I’m from RI – so I know all about humidity and its evils. But humidity coupled with 106 degree weather is a torment. You cannot even THINK with conditions like that.

Finally – the temperature dipped down … and things became normal – but the city was traumatized. We could not believe how many people had died. It was incomprehensible. I heard the numbers and didn’t believe it. I also had kind of not taken it all that seriously – so I don’t have air-conditioning, so what? People in Africa don’t have air-conditioning! Why did so many people perish?

And promptly – after the thermometer dropped to a freezing 89 degrees – I got sicker than I have ever been in my life. It was a flu or something – it is still rather mysterious what it was what was wrong with me. I am convinced that some of it was psychosomatic – a reaction to the impending Good-byes. My doctor made a house call. I am still amazed by that fact.

My own internal temperature rose to 103 degrees, which … is hard to explain. It’s hard to explain what goes on when your fever gets that high. Everything ceased being real. There was no reality. I would lie on the couches in my living room, immovable, feeling like my body had dissolved – and I remember one frightening day when I started having fever-induced hallucinations about ice bergs. Huge blue ice bergs bearing down on me, over a dark cold sea.

I was in a panic about leaving Chicago. I called my boyfriend at the time – no other word for him, I guess – He and I were not going to continue on, once I left – it seemed better for both of us – but the good-byes were approaching for us as well, and I was panicked. In the middle of my sickest day, I called him up – FREAKED OUT – but in a very dulled and spacy way – When your temperature is 103, you can’t really articulate yourself in any normal way. Anyway, I called him and began expressing my utter panic that I would never ever get better, and the days were ticking by, and soon I was going to have to leave, and if I didn’t get better soon, he and I wouldn’t be able to have any time together before my departure. I kept saying, in my spacy panicked way, “I am going to be robbed of seeing you. I just know it. I am going to be ROBBED.” He knew that he was not dealing with a rational human being at that point. He was very calm, very detached. “We’ll see each other. You’ll feel better, and we’ll see each other.” I kept repeating like a lunatic, “No. No. I am going to be ROBBED of the chance to say Good-bye to you in a normal way.” Later, when I was normal again, we laughed about this, and he did an imitation of me during that phone call. Stating in this firm weepy voice, “I am going to be ROBBED.” No matter WHAT comforting thing he said, I ignored it, and continued to state, “I am going to be ROBBED.”

Anyway, he was right. I did feel better, eventually, and we did get to hang out a lot in the last month before I took off.

And a weird coda – during the week that I was sick, I decided, randomly, to get a tattoo. I had drawn a picture in my journal of a phoenix – it was all almost one line – because I felt like I was literally going to burn up into ashes. I only hoped that everything would regenerate. I was excited about starting a new life in New York – but I dreaded leaving. I hoped that there would be life after the fiery death. (What can I say. Having a 103 degree temperature is a bizarre experience). So – I made my way to Belmont Tattoo in the middle of the day. I still couldn’t really feel my body because I was so sick, and it was also about 90 degree weather. The place was empty and I showed the tattoo artist the drawing of the phoenix. “Could you put that on my shoulder, please?” He initially didn’t want to do it, because he, like my boyfriend, realized that he was not dealing with a fully rational being. I said, “No, no, I’m serious. I really want it. Will you do it?”

He did.

So I’ve got this little phoenix on my back, which … if I think about it … reminds me, ultimately, of that crazy summer of 1995, the summer of good-byes, the summer of endings and new beginnings. But to me – in my memory – that entire summer stays in my mind as one of heat – Heat out in the world, and heat in my own head. Transparent terrifying ice bergs, crowding up against my aching eyeballs, as I lay on my green velvet couch – Taking icy-cold baths, rubbing ice cubes over my limbs – The heat wave of July … the entire city dark and apocalyptic – with lines of ambulances – stuck in traffic – Heat like a heavy lead blanket laid over the world.