Extreme heat is the deadliest weather emergency, but federal disaster aid is shortchanging the nation's hottest regions. That’s according to an investigation by my colleague Thomas Frank, who found a pattern of federal agencies ignoring or minimizing the threat of extreme heat. The nation’s disaster apparatus, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to protect people and rebuild from crises such as storms and tornadoes, does not consider extreme heat a catastrophe. Related laws and regulations treat heat as a discomfort and air conditioning as a luxury — homeowners, for example, can’t use government-backed mortgages to pay for window AC units. Federal aid for electricity is also overwhelmingly used to heat homes in frigid winters. Colder states like Maine, North Dakota and Vermont receive almost eight times as much federal funding as Arizona, Florida and Hawaii to help pay for residential energy bills and home weatherization. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given billions of dollars to homeowners to protect against flooding, tornadoes, hurricane winds, earthquakes and wildfires. But it has not given similar grants to protect people from extreme heat. The agency does not explicitly list heat mitigation among the projects states can fund using climate protection dollars. In 2022, FEMA rejected a $10 million request by the New York City Housing Authority for air conditioning improvements, calling the project “ineligible.” It’s worth noting, though, that FEMA said it recently provided about $15 million for projects addressing extreme heat. The Biden administration has pledged to safeguard against the consequences of climate change, including by creating a “national heat strategy.” But it’s unclear who is in charge of the plan’s execution. “There’s a lack of a coherent governmentwide policy,” Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association, told Tom. “There’s no sense of who’s in charge.” The Congressional Research Service echoed that criticism in an April report: “No federal agency claims responsibility for managing emergency preparedness and response to extreme heat.” The White House did not respond to Tom’s requests for comment. The lack of a heat safety net has proved deadly. In July 2023, extreme heat killed an estimated 1,130 U.S. residents — the most ever in a single month. National Weather Service records dating back to 1996 show that among heat deaths where a location is known, 62 percent of people died indoors, according to an analysis of the records by POLITICO’s E&E News.
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