A Collaborative Approach To Combat Extreme Heat

Marta Segura, Climate Mobilization Director at City of Los Angeles

Marta Segura, Climate Mobilization Director at City of Los Angeles

Los Angeles is experiencing more frequent, longer lasting and hotter heat waves and our heat season is longer, from June to mid-November, it's our new normal and we are never going back to the milder summers of the past.  As the City of Los Angeles' first Chief Heat Officer (CHO) and also the City's founding Director of the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, I have built our team with the burden of knowing people are being harmed and suffering preventable deaths and injuries from extreme heat.  We started as an office of one to now an office of 6, yet our greatest strength is in collaboration with other departments and offices throughout the City and also the County. This office co-governs on climate, environmental justice and extreme heat and the solutions intersect with Emergency Response and Awareness, public health, public safety, the built environment, transportation, energy policy, air pollution and nature-based solutions. 

A CHO must take a collaborative approach and be willing to advocate new ideas and innovation that engage other city leaders and the community in building solutions. In this capacity, our office, with the support of the Office of the Mayor, community organizations and voices, and City leaders across many departments, will create a heat action & resilience plan focused on heat resilience investments, mitigations, heat risk communications and policies to address the ravages of extreme heat with a seamless, coordinated approach while aligning with existing city plans to maximize our resources. It's based on the State's Extreme Heat Program but has added track of accountability and governance. Most plans lack a vision of tracking and communicating their progress with the public, so we plan to make this a necessary feature. 

We can only achieve heat resilience by coordinating with other departments and having a system of accountability supported by the entire City and community. To create shade equity, we will need increased access to cooling centers, shade structures, hydration stations, resilience hubs, open space, permeable pavement and equitable tree canopy, especially where this is lacking.

As an example of a recent heat resilience program, we have created an extensive Cooling Center Network and just recently the City Council voted to create an expansion of our Library services, to serve as cooling centers, in some of the most heat-impacted areas open their libraries on Sundays, when there is a heat alert.  We have also expanded our network of water stations for the unhoused and created climate stations for them.  And every public library now has a hydration station.  We are also on the verge of expanding our bus shelters to make public transit more heat-resilient.  These are but a few examples of the City of Los Angeles.  Across the planet, extreme heat is a growing danger to humans, animals and our city’s infrastructure. We have never had a greater sense of urgency to prevent greater loss and save our climate. The upside is that we can plan and prepare for extreme heat and design a heat-adapted city with heat-resilient, walkable and livable cities and housing. There is no time to waste and we hope that others follow in our tracks.