Chicago Closes Cooling Centers During a Heat Wave

The weather forecast for Chicago on Juneteenth calls for dangerous conditions due to high temperatures and humidity, according to accuweather.com.

There is stupidity and then there are acts of malfeasance done by politicians. The City of Chicago leaders have chosen the latter with the decision to close most of the city’s cooling centers on June 19th due to the Juneteenth holiday. Forget that it is going to be 93 degrees with high humidity that will make the real feel temperature 99, according to accuweather. The city is more concerned with the holiday, even though Mother Nature never goes on break. This would be like closing the city’s heating centers on Christmas even though a blizzard is in the forecast.

According to a media release from the Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communications, the only cooling center that will be open will be the Garfield Community Service Center on the city’s West Side. All of the city’s 81 public libraries, which are also used as cooling centers, will be closed, the release read.

This is an act of stupidity by city officials and shows many of them do not remember what happened in 1995. In July of that year, over 700 citizens lost their lives due to heat related complications when an unrelenting heat wave lingered over the city for seemingly endless days. It was so bad that refrigerated trucks had to be brought to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office because there were so many bodies at the morgue. Police were finding corpses all over the city, with many officers reporting the bodies were hot to the touch, even hours after the person had expired when a body will typically be cold.

Social Scientist Eric Klinenberg, author of the 2002 book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, stated many of the victims were elderly Black people who either didn’t have access to air conditioning or were too stubborn to turn it on. Others who had air conditioning didn’t want to use it because of economic considerations since many were living on fixed incomes.

This message from Chicago’s OEMC was posted on its Twitter (X) account June 18.

Chicago needs to reverse this decision immediately or they could be dealing with a major disaster on their hands along with a political fallout that would be just as big as when Mayor Michael Bilandic didn’t get the streets plowed fast enough after a blizzard in 1979. Chicagoans expect certain things from their city leaders and dealing with a weather crisis is one of them. We will tolerate some corruption, but you better fix potholes or your ass is grass.

How ironic that Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t see the need to look out for the most vulnerable citizens in Chicago of all races, but especially those who were his core voters in the election; Black senior citizens. It could be the nail in the coffin for his politicial ambitions if he doesn’t get the message soon.