Low-income Richmond residents suffer more heat-related emergencies (2024)

Beads of sweat dripped down Sparkle Veronica Taylor’s neck as she walked over the North First Street bridge spanning Interstate 95, headed away from Jackson Ward, on Thursday. She tucked a green towel in the strap of her shirt to wick away sweat as she walked in the summer heat.

Since she doesn’t own a car, Taylor typically travels by foot and by bus. She says she usually walks about 5 miles per day. The summer months come with an extra step of preparation.

“I feel like it’s scary when I venture out sometimes,” Taylor said. “I try to make sure I’m hydrated and carry something with me to collect water if I see a fountain.”

Taylor said she is a veteran at handling heat in general, having lived farther south in Texas and New Orleans.

“I have dealt with excruciating heat conditions much farther south of Richmond,” Taylor said. “If I feel like I’m not safe to continue forward like I usually do, either I’ll stop or just turn around and go back home.”

Taylor isn’t alone. In 2016, 18% of Richmond households didn’t own a car, or around 19,000 households within the city boundary, according to a study from Vanderbilt University.

The study called “A Heat Emergency: Urban Heat Exposure and Access to Refuge in Richmond, VA” was authored by researchers from the Virginia Department of Health, the University of Richmond, the Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services and the nonprofit Groundwork USA. It examined where EMS responded to calls for heat-related illnesses and analyzed their proximity to cooling centers or possible cooling centers like public libraries.

Many of those recorded EMS calls included data showing what the person was doing just before the incident.

Sitting, standing or laying down outside accounted for 17% of the EMS calls, while walking outside accounted for 16% of the total incidents. Alcohol or substance use was also at about 16%. People who suffered heat illnesses after exercise or recreation were about 6% and 3% of the total, respectively.

Nearly half of the incidents happened on a sidewalk or road.

Of the 492 heat-related illnesses that occurred in the city of Richmond between 2016 and 2022, about 62% involved Black residents, despite Blacks making up only about 40% of the city’s population.

That study also showed that city-operated cooling stations, and other heat shelters such as libraries and community centers, are placed too far apart to help the people who need them the most.

More than half of the reported heat emergencies happened within a 15-minute “fast” walk of a heat shelter.

This research follows up on previous work from the group, which found that Richmond is home to several urban heat islands — areas of the city with hotter temperatures. Those areas can be hotter due to the type of construction materials used that trap heat and a general lack of tree cover, among other factors.

Where the hottest areas are in Richmond

The region isn’t the only place feeling the warmth. Record heat has hit several countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia in 2024.

A study in the journal Science Advances reported that climate change is making giant heat waves move more slowly and affect more people for a longer time, with higher temperatures over larger areas.

Richmond’s hottest areas were Manchester, Jackson Ward, the Diamond District, Monroe Ward and Scott’s Addition. Many of these are historically Black neighborhoods.

Sheri Shannon, a co-founder of nonprofit group Southside ReLeaf, said the results of the new study were “bleak.”

“Where should people be going?” Shannon said. “I’m looking at this map and there is only one cooling center for all of Southside.”

There are also three libraries in Southside, which are each separated by over an hour’s walk.

“This entire thing is centered around health and health emergencies that are preventable,” Shannon said.

Southside ReLeaf is one of many nonprofits working to plant and sustain trees in Richmond’s hottest neighborhoods. It also advocates for more resources and attention on bolstering those neighborhoods in the long run.

“The city needs the resources and funding to have workforce crews to maintain canopy cover,” Shannon said. “There has to be some equity as far as urban forestry preservation.”

The blazing summer heat can push the body into a shutdown marked with a loss of consciousness, confusion or seizures in just 10 to 15 minutes, according to the CDC.

Hospital visits spiked along with the recent heat wave. In the seven days between Friday, June 21 and Thursday, there were 421 heat-related emergency department and urgent care visits in Virginia. There was about half of that amount the previous week. Over the past nine years, Virginia has averaged roughly 2,500 heat-related emergency department and urgent care visits per year.

Fred Perkins works as a temp on a truck collecting city trash. After his shift, he uses public transportation and his feet on the pavement to get home.

Heat is always a concern, he said, but most of the time he just pushes through it. On Thursday afternoon, he walked home from the bus stop in downtown, wearing a head wrap to shield himself from the sun.

“If I’m walking and I feel like I’m going to break down, that’s when I fight off fatigue,” Perkins said. “When that first feeling of fatigue comes, that’s when I try to start breathing through my nose.”

Wherever he goes, Perkins says he is typically focused on using measured breaths through his nose to keep himself from feeling lightheaded or dizzy.

“Sometimes I might be outside for an hour. It might be 30 minutes,” he said. “I’ll stop if I need to.”

Why don’t people go to cooling centers?

Jeremy Hoffman, director of climate justice and impact at Groundwork USA — one of the study’s coauthors — has been tracking urban heat temperatures since 2017. He says great strides have been made by the city over the past couple of years, but that the new study shows there is still more work to be done.

In addition to cooling centers opening during the summer, Richmond started using libraries and community centers as places where people can go to avoid the heat. The hours for some of these facilities were also extended to increase access.

Despite those changes, Hoffman says the data shows that these shelters are not always reaching the people they are meant to help.

“We need to understand more about why people aren’t going to these cooling centers,” Hoffman said. “Is it the distrust of a city service, whether it’s enjoyable to walk through that environment, or just a lack of knowledge (that the facility is there)?”

Richmond received a $6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to invest in equity-centered urban forestry efforts, partnering with four local nonprofits. Hoffman says that money will not work if it’s directed from the “top down” and needs to take input from the community.

Using funds to help fix the HVAC system at a local church could be one example of a community-focused fix.

“Churches, restaurants and businesses can be these informal cooling centers,” Hoffman said. “How are we redirecting this historic amount of federal funding into these resilience hubs?”

He added that his research shows a financial benefit from repairing heat islands. Hoffman estimates that every dollar put into tree planting saves $4 by reducing the number of EMS calls and the burden put on the health system.

“Anyone with a stock portfolio should see that that’s a good investment,” Hoffman said.

Local groups say there is even more opportunity — between the libraries, cooling centers and informal shelters — to shield people from the heat.

RVA Rapid Transit is a nonprofit working to improve transit issues regionwide. Its 2024 State of Transit Report included information that 40% of heat-related illnesses happened within 300 feet of a bus stop. Less than 5% of those bus stops have cover.

Richmond added around 30 new shelters in 2023.

Bus stops that lack cover can vary significantly in temperatures. Thermal imaging showed that covered stops on a warm day were between 95 and 100 degrees. Uncovered bus stops were around 110 to 115 degrees.

“If you’re in the hot sun walking, it’s not because you want to, it’s because you have no other choice,” said Faith Walker, executive director for RVA Rapid Transit.

Nearly every reported heat-related illness was recorded within a 15-minute walk of a bus stop.

Even sheltered stops can be made from metal materials that trap or hold heat. Walker said future procurement from the city should look for shelters made from different materials.

In the interim, Walker said, the city could consider the cheaper fix of using reflective paints on current bus stop shelters to cool them even more.

The EMS call data, and corresponding walk times to shelter, is limited because the data does not show the quality of sidewalk infrastructure. Estimated walk times cannot factor in the added time it would take to travel across poor sidewalks or even areas without sidewalks.

Shannon, with Southside ReLeaf, said that becomes an increased concern for anyone with mobility issues. Sidewalks can be uneven and hard to use, or sometimes just end.

At 87 years old, Richard Varish uses his walker to get around his neighborhood on Hull Street in Manchester. He no longer drives a car and walks about five blocks over uneven pavement to get to the bus when he needs to travel.

He said he almost passed out in his home once after coming inside on a hot day.

“In this hot weather, I can’t come outside too much. My legs are always ready to give out on me,” Varish said.

He stopped to rest in the shaded overhang of a vacant shop near his bus stop before walking home.

Varish recently lost his identification and credit cards in a gas station ATM robbery. He said he is waiting until his niece comes into town from Philadelphia to make the trek across town to the DMV to get a new ID card.

“I wouldn’t even try doing it myself.”