When a heat wave hits Charlotte, local governments’ immediate response is simple: open a cooling center, hand out fans. Long term? The city is planting trees and plans to power all municipal, commercial, industrial and residential buildings from zero carbon sources by 2050.
But with hotter days and higher utility bills already here, these tactics might not be enough to keep residents safe.
“There are a lot of things that, as an emergency manager, I would like to see,” said Robert Graham, deputy director of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Emergency Management Office. “We need our natural space, and we need more trees all the time — more trees.”
Trees are central to the city’s plan to fight extreme heat. At the same time, Charlotte’s Urban Forester Tim Porter has said for years that the tree canopy is shrinking.
“A recent analysis says if you keep business as usual in 2050 the best case scenario is 41%,” Porter said. “Even maintain that, you have to plant many more trees than we're planting now.”
Trees are a long-term investment — a sapling does little to block the sun — so what is the city doing to address heat now?
“We need to make sure people have access to fans,” Graham said. “There are some basic things that people don’t think about. Always have an emergency plan — that’s incredibly important.”
During last week’s heatwave, Mecklenburg County provided 560 free box fans to senior citizens and residents with disabilities.
“There's an initiative out there to require air conditioning,” Graham said.
That initiative is the small landlord retrofit assistance program. The program, which is still developing, would provide funding to landlords who want to install A/C units in their rentals.
City law says that if landlords do provide A/C, they are required to keep it in working order. But, there is no state law that says landlords have to provide A/C.
City Council member LaWana Mayfield and others are worried if Charlotte goes stricter than state code, it will get slapped down.
“If we have higher standards than what the General Assembly has identified as the bare minimum, that can be challenged,” Mayfield said.
That has not stopped cities in other states with similar legislative dispositions, such as Austin, Texas and New Orleans, Louisiana. Like most cities, Charlotte is significantly hotter than the surrounding rural areas.
This is the urban heat island effect, when dense urban development replaces natural landcover, and it contributes to the risk residents face on hot days. It can feel 10 degrees hotter in Charlotte than it does in the more rural Wadesboro, according to the Charlotte Urban Heat Mappers.
Still, heat-related emergency department visits in Mecklenburg County are lower relative to population when compared to more rural counties, such as Lincoln and Iredell. But, anecdotal evidence from emergency room staff suggests that most people visiting Mecklenburg's emergency room are coming from their houses.
“We see a lot of cases, mainly from home,” said Ashleigh Huddy, an assistant nurse manager who works in emergency services for Novant Health. “People doing things that they would do on a daily basis, just with the increase in temperatures — I don't think people realize the impacts that that can have.”
Huddy added that senior citizens are at a disproportionate risk. This includes Gloria Romano, who lives in a senior community and received a free fan from the county.
“Financially, the utility bills are really high,” Romano said. “With this kind of heat, we need any additional help that we can get.”
Dr. Katherine Idziorek, a professor of urban studies who leads the Urban Heat Mappers team at UNC Charlotte, said Charlotte's on the right track, but there’s room to improve.
“Expanding the number and distribution of cooling centers that we have, making sure that everybody has access to a free, accessible space that has cooling, especially if they don't have it in their home or if their cooling is unreliable, is really important,” Idziorek said.
She also said it's important to think holistically.
“We need to be thinking about long-term development,” Idziorek said. “We need to be thinking about those short-term actions. We need to think about how we can, within our communities, do what we can to support our neighbors and community members.”
