1. One of the things that really surprised in this article is the chart that showed the percentages of black population in particular community areas in Chicago. I was shocked to see numbers like 99% and 0%. Living in NYC, seeing such extreme lack of racial mixing is hard to believe because one would never think to see this in a neighborhood here. Most percentages that are not 99 or 0 where above 96. This is a strange distribution of people to someone used to New York.
2. No sociologists were hired to examine the heat wave of 1995 disaster. The government probably didn’t want to bring up the unpleasant social issues because confronting them might be politically upsetting to them. This is yet another situation that smells of a government that could care less for the lives of their people and just want power and control of that city’s resources. Older people died more than the young people during the heat wave, which is to be expected, but once again, the poorer population was the one with higher death rates and yet the research of the problems their economic status caused was not officially researched by the government. Evidence in this article shows that areas with majority black residents were not helped by the city nearly as much as the areas with majority Latino or white residents. This is hardly an accident and is obvious racism, but I wish I could saying something new about it or even feel extremely shocked that it happened. Throughout history, there are groups that are discriminated against by the government and the major issue here is that I bet this hardly even surprises people anymore. The only thing I find hard to imagine and understand is how exactly does such discrimination happen? Do city officials actually sit there and decide to send help to certain places and avoid the others, or leave some places for last? That seems like something that just cannot happen to me and yet the maps of these disaster areas show that something like that must have occurred. That is the real shocking part: the actual details of how this must have went on.
3. “The baseline death rate in Chicago during July is roughly 72 per day.” I was surprised to see such a high number and even more surprised that this is considered a normal thing and not much is done about it. It’s amazing that Chicago is a major city: why would people live there if the summer is so difficult to endure? Reading this convinced me to never even consider living there.
4. As a final comment, I’m not sure why so many people decided to break open the fire hydrants and let the water out from there. It doesn’t seem logical because that water will create insane humidity and will only make the heat worse. The body will then have an even more difficult time trying to cool itself down. Not to mention the stupid and irresponsible behavior of the people that were shooting at the workers who came to close the fire hydrants (and injuring four of them). Chances are, if the city is doing something like that in the middle of a crisis, they are trying to help the people that live there. Even the most apathetic city government will not do a stupid political move of taking a relief source away from people if it really is a relief source. To me, a safer alternative to breaking open the fire hydrants would have been standing under a cold water shower at home and taking turns doing that with other family members. If people were doing that instead, they wouldn’t have had the problem of also losing water in their homes (which honestly seems indescribably awful during such a disaster).
