Fair-goers scorched by heartland heat wave take refuge under misters as some schools let out early

Associated Press

FALCON HEIGHTS, Minn. (AP) — Visitors to the Minnesota State Fair sought relief from soaring temperatures under misters Monday while some Midwestern schools dismissed classes early or called off sports practices.

Highs approaching the century mark combined with oppressive humidity to made it feel like 105 to 115 degrees (40 to 46 Celsius) across the country’s heartland, the National Weather Service said. It issued heat warnings or advisories for large swaths of Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.

“There’s going to be some records in play today,” warned Ashton Robinson Cook, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

Several cities opened cooling centers, including in Des Moines, Iowa, where city buses were available to give people free rides to the sites. Experts urged those venturing outside to drink plenty of water.

“It is certainly steamy,” said Dr. Haley Taormina, an emergency medicine physician for Regions Hospital EMS, while treating fair-goers in Minnesota for heat illnesses.

By 11 a.m., she already had seen firefighters cut rings off two people’s fingers after they became swollen from the heat and salty fair food. Extra health care workers were assigned to the fair’s medical stations, and air-conditioned city buses were parked nearby to give sweltering fair-goers a place to escape the heat.

On the fairgrounds, Blake Perkins, of Princeton, Minnesota, watched as his giggling 8- and 7-year-old daughters played under one of the water misters, plotting the rides they planned to go on next. “Thick and humid,” was how he described the sticky conditions.

Mikosa Taylor, of St. Paul, sipped on a drink to keep hydrated.

“We are really trying to just make sure that we are staying cool and bringing kids inside when they need to be inside and standing by these misters when necessary,” she said.

Brandie Jackson wore a battery-operated cooling fan around her neck while fanning herself with a piece of paper. But she is from Shreveport, Louisiana, so the heat and humidity wasn’t unusual for her. “This is the norm,” she said.

Meanwhile, Detroit’s public schools implemented a 3-hour early release for students Monday and Tuesday because of scorching temperatures. The district said in a post on its webpage that it will decide Monday evening if the early release will be extended to Wednesday. Only 30% of the district’s schools have air conditioning available, according to a spokeswoman.

The district has embarked on a 20-year facility master plan and expects that within five years nearly all of its schools will have new HVAC and air conditioning.

In the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Township, the temperature was in the high 80s as a T & J Landscaping crew worked Monday on a drainage issue outside a home. But it was Tuesday that company owner Tom Caramagno said he was more concerned about when the temperature was expected to reach into the 90s.

“Our typical challenge when we have these extreme temperatures is to make sure the guys hydrate themselves,” Caramagno said. “If we don’t have anything to hydrate, douse yourself with a hose, take breaks, get in the shade. We don’t really look for the productivity on days like that, so really it’s just putting out more of the emergency fires.”

DTE Energy, which provides electricity for much of southeastern Michigan and the state’s Thumb region, said the utility is monitoring energy loads on its circuits and making adjustments when needed to keep the power on for customers during times of heavy demand.

“Our teams in the System Operation Center as well as field crews are working around the clock to prepare for the high heat and possible pop-up storms predicted this week,” DTE Energy said in an email.

In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson declared “Summer is over!” as students in the nation’s fourth-largest school district headed back to class on Monday. Johnson, a former teacher and union organizer, visited a northwest side elementary school to ring in the occasion.

But with temperatures expected to climb to the mid-90s, Chicago officials said recess and physical education classes would be held indoors Monday and Tuesday. District officials also canceled outdoor athletic competitions scheduled for the start of the week.

All classrooms in the district’s more than 600 schools have air-conditioning, but common spaces in older buildings, like hallways, often don’t. District officials said if air-conditioning units malfunction, they would provide other cooling devices like chillers.

Separately, the city of Chicago opened more than 250 “cooling centers” to the public through Wednesday for residents to get relief.

In Indiana, all Gary Community Schools middle school athletic programs and events were canceled Monday and Tuesday, while all high school athletic teams have been instructed to practice — without exception — indoors, the northwestern Indiana district said Monday in an email.

By midweek, the heat will shift to the South and East, said Cook, the meteorologist with National Weather Service.

“The cool-off is coming,” he said. “It’s going to take a little bit of time.”

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Corey Williams in Detroit and Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report. Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.