This summer brought 23 days above 38°C. Our volunteers kept cooling centres open and checked on isolated neighbours. Here is what we learned.
- Distance matters. Cooling centres more than a fifteen-minute walk away were barely used by older residents.
- Evening hours matter more. Many homes stay dangerously hot after sunset; centres that closed at 6pm missed the worst hours.
- Phone trees still work. Neighbour-to-neighbour calls reached people that text alerts did not.
- Shade is unequal. The five hottest districts had less than half the tree cover of the coolest.
- Renters need protections. Many tenants had no working air conditioning and no clear right to ask for it.
We have shared these findings with the city’s emergency management office and will publish our full recommendations in October.
