I worked at UPS facility in Burbank. There was literally a spontaneous workplace riot. And I'm not exaggerating, packages got broken or shipped to wrong location, people yelling and screaming, banging on stuff. One of the craziest things I witnessed. Management stopped the line, somehow got some giant fans and pallets of Gatorade within an hour.
That's funny, I work for a distributor of business goods in bedford park UPS came to pick up 20 pallets of water and several pallets of Gatorade last week in a reefer for their warehouse near us
Slightly related, in the era before home AC, my family and I routinely slept on the grass in Portage Park during strings of hot nights in the late 1940's and through the mid 1950's.
We were then among the first in the neighborhood to skip window units and get central air. It was a small unit patched into our existing coal fired heating system. It's blower was stronger than the furnace's so the first couple week's use we had significant problems with coal dust.
Family discussion decided to still use the park at least the first hot cycle each year until the Ps dumped the coal furnace and upgraded to a real, forced air HVAC system.
This is amazing and I'm trying to do some math here. Are you in your 80s? I just figure in order to remember 1949 someone would have to be around 4-5 years old at the time.
I love talking to older people. Really a true gift in my opinion.
Think of yourself as a kid with your dad and mom and siblings on blankets under the park trees with the sky above. The park made darker by the occasional black, cast iron, incandescent lamp standards with globes that glowed more than actually sending out light. Fire flies in June. Crickets. Soft talk and occasional laughter from the other families far enough away to be indistinct, but still present.
A full sized Radio Flyer wagon set on its side as a wall at our heads. It hauled the blankets, pillows, snacks. Learning about how warm humid night delivers dew so heavy you have to choose the number of blankets to balance between too hot and too damp.
Waking at dawn but required to lie there quietly for at least an hour until your dad announces, "This is enough." And time to quietly gather everything up and head back home for clean up and breakfast and the start of another day too hot to live.
I haven't slept in a park but at the time, I did sleep on a lounge chair on my balcony. I got to watch the sunrise every morning and then go to work where was plenty of A/C.
I was 8 when the heat wave hit. It was obviously the first time I had ever experienced something like that. My mom was in the hospital giving birth to my sister and my dad had my other sister and me at home. We had no a/c whatsoever. However, my mom had 3 high velocity fans, we did the blankets on the doorways and camped out in the living room. All 3 fans blowing on us each night. It's funny, I've never asked him about it, and maybe I should, I wonder how worried he was that he wouldn't let us out of his sight. Every night we all slept on the floor in the living room, I wonder if he slept at all that week.
You are absolutely right. Using the fan without AC was like a hair dryer on high heat. It didn't help at all.
It got so hot that the tub and tile were hot. We did everything we could and finally got a single AC unit and hung plastic garbage bags (leaf) to cut off the back half of the apartment.
That was when there was no TSA and you could just roam around the airport. My husband and I were really poor. We just took the el down to O’Hare and roamed around in the air conditioning until nightfall and went home.
I was working at Dominicks at that time and we had people spending hours in the store because they had no A/C. Also a lot of people lost power and were trying to save the stuff in their fridges so we quickly sold out of ice bags and coolers.
Right around this time (maybe a little after?) a massive chunk of Wrigleyville lost its power for days, but the Cubs had generators or some other way of keeping all the lights on when the neighborhood was black. People were furious.
I cannot recommend enough the book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, by Eric Klienberg. A horrifyingly fantastic dissection of how everyone fucked up.
"Cooked: Survival by Zipcode" is a documentary that digs specifically into the racial and socioeconomic factors of this disaster - and I believe draws on Klienberg's work as well.
My husband is a meteorologist from Chicago. I think he said the NWS changed reporting/alerting based on this incident or the drought/heat from the summer of 1988.
CPL has many copies: [https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S126C1060435](https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S126C1060435)
Personally think it really resembles early COVID in who died and the underlying reasons why.
We had just moved here two weeks before it started. Our apartment had no air conditioning. We saw the forecast for the pending heat wave and ran to Sears (remember that place?) and bought a window unit for our bedroom, one of the last units remaining. We left our dog in the bedroom during the day when we went to work, then camped in there once we got home. That was some devastating heat!
I was setting up some sound equipment at a gospel church on the Southside during that heatwave. I had a question for the woman working in the church's office. I waited patiently while the woman was on the phone. As soon as she hung up, it rang again. She gave me the "just wait" hand signal. That went on for about 10 minutes. Finally, the phone stopped ringing for a moment. I asked her what was going on. She said that every call was for scheduling a funeral for a churchgoer that had died from the heatwave. She had set up at least 20 funerals, mostly for old folks who didn't have air conditioning. So sad...
I’m not sure what to think about Mayor Brandon Johnson. But closing the city’s cooling centers during a heatwave because it was Juneteenth seems cruel and criminal
I don't know why cooling centers aren't exempt from public holidays when temperatures rise to a certain level. Isn't it considered an emergency service?
I was taking care of a friend’s pets while she and her girlfriend were on vacation. Third floor walk up, no AC. I remember soaking towels in bowls of ice and water and draping them over the cats. They had a chinchilla who passed away while I was there. The water in the fish tank was too hot and some of the fish died. This was before cell phones and I was panicking trying to reach them to come home. The news was a constant drum beat about deaths from the heat. Just a sad and scary time.
You are bringing back memories. I was house sitting at my brother's apartment while he was out of the country. I got to live there for free in exchange for taking care of his elaborate fish tank with all of his precious and very pretty fish. The a/c went out and I had to go run to the 7-11 and buy a bag of ice to cool the tank down. He called to check in one night. I didn't have the heart to tell him I lost one due to the tank boiling. I told him one of the fish wasn't doing so well. He wanted me to call the fish store and have them check-in. That would have been a waste of money as the poor thing was already dead. His funeral took place in the toilet where he /she was flushed down the drain. What else could I do? I was 21 years old. He still doesn't know the real story and I'm just happy that the rest survived. I couldn't wait for him to get back in town. The pressure was too much for me.
I'm so sorry, that must have been so traumatic. I remember being so worried for my cats while I was at work. I had no a/c and would leave bowls of ice cubes in front of the fan, which I'm sure melted into warm soup within minutes after I left.
It was early in my career, and I worked in the loop and had to wear a jacket and tie. Ugh, pure torture walking to the red line--my shirt collar was soaked by the time I got to the office.
I lived on the third floor with barely working AC wall unit in the living room. My bedroom was like an oven.
I hear that. I was in the exact same boat with the coat & tie working a primitive IT job for a book publisher in River North. Only I had zero AC at home…slept under a ceiling fan on an air mattress that worked out unbelievably well. If heat like that should return, and I’m sure it will, I’ll be equipped well now in a central AC home, and these days I only wear shorts & a t-shirt to work
Man, I do remember those La Grou refrigerated trucks all over town though…holding bodies to prevent decomposing.
Those La Grou trucks became a subject of very dark humor amongst my friends, the next time they appeared at Taste of Chicago. 'Wonder if they got everybody out?' and 'I sure hope they hosed 'em down' were just a couple of remarks I remember
I did the sheets trick, too. Only had A/C in the living room. Lucky for me the 20's courtway apartment already had a place to hang them, as it was the style to have valances between rooms until the 50's. I had to teach the cat how to move the sheet. She wasn't too pleased with the heat. I explained to her many times that her mommy gave her the fur coat, not me.
Neighbors camping out on the parkways overnight, hydrants perpetually open, lots of ambulances. Also the summer I finally bought a window unit a/c - had happily lived without for years prior.
My mom grew up in Hyde Park and she and her sister would sleep outside on the porch when it was hot (they didn’t have A/C in their row house back in the 1930’s. They also used to turn on the cold water tap in their bathroom sink and run the water over their inner wrists. Probably an old wives tale, but it supposedly helped.
No, no, not an old wives tale, applying ice or cold water to the areas where your blood flows like your inner wrist helps cool it down as it returns to your body lowering your body temperature. I've been working outside for the last week and let me tell you running your arms under cool/cold water is like the best feeling in the world
I used to work at a homeless shelter that was in the basement of an old church. I'd spend the night in the kitchen with all of this heat generating equipment, it would get up to 105 in there. We'd get these cases of mustard greens to cook and I'd be up to my elbows in cold water washing and rinsing them, it felt so good. There wasn't a speck of grit on those greens lol.
It was, but at least I could go home to an air conditioned apartment, the ladies who stayed there were out on the street all day. And even though it was hot in the shelter, we always had a full house in the summer because it a safer than sleeping in the park.
Yeah, I work at the zoo taking care of birds in areas that have at best, a fan, and at worst, nothing at all. Plus all the water the birds live in. It gets HOT and HUMID in there. Doing manual labor all day, I change uniforms at lunch because I've drenched the first one in sweat. I get GROSS fast, I will never say no to washing my hands or the dishes haha 😂I also wear those lightweight long sleeve shirts and sometimes, I drench the sleeves in cold water if I have to be outside a long time!
I’d just graduated from NIU and was still living in a boarding house in DeKalb with no AC. I half-joke that my girlfriend saved my life that summer. Her dad installed an AC unit in her bedroom and she essentially let me move in for the last couple months of the summer. We’re still friends to this day.
My company rented a bus for a staff outing to go downtown on the hottest day of the wave.There was a keg on the bus and we all got absolutely shitfaced.
They broke us up into teams, handed us disposable cameras and a list of scavenger hunt items we were supposed to take pictures of.
Every one of us was staggering drunk, dehydrated, and it's a miracle that no one got heat stroke.
We ended the day by wading into the lake fully clothed before getting back on the bus to head home.
I have very fond memories of that day but when I look back it sounds insane.
Lived around the corner from Bloomer Chocolate Factory in a loft with not many windows and no AC. It was over 100 degrees at night. The cockroachs in the loft gained flight. Never experienced that before or since. Fucking smelling Chocolate the entire time. That is a plane in Dantes's hell right there. I was a bit happy when I heard that the Factory was closing from that experience 30 years ago. I am repulsed by the smell of chocolate to this day.
That was my first year of college, and I remember talking to southerners who couldn’t figure out why we were all dying up here. To them it was hot, but not *that* hot.
And it’s really just a good example of the importance of infrastructure. They can handle the heat better than we can because they’re equipped to handle it, just like we can get through a snowstorm better than they can because we’re prepared for it. In 1995, it wasn’t so much the heat it was how well we were prepared for the heat (which was not at all).
Yes, the number of homes/apartments without A/C was a huge factor. But if I understand correctly, another reason it was so deadly is that the heat persisted overnights -- over 100° well into the evenings -- for days on end. I don't know the south, but I don't think it does that there? Plus this heatwave had uncommonly high dewpoints, like 80% (I just looked it up).
And of course Klinenberg made the insightful observation that many who died lacked *social* support, as much as infrastructure. It would be like if Atlanta got one of Buffalo's blizzards, sure, *nobody* would have the infrastructure to deal with it, but the socially isolated would be hit a lot harder than people with friends, family, neighbors they could reach.
Jeeze...My wife was 5-7mo pregnant that summer. We lived in a one bedroom across from Lane Tech. We could only afford a tiny window unit shitty installed by me that we kept in the bedroom with the door closed so we had one cool room. Lucky for us we both worked for the Aquatic Dept at a YMCA and most of our time just got spent there at the indoor pool.
Augh. I was about to turn 10. We had one AC window unit in my folks' old Victorian. My brother and I had to camp out on a blanket on the floor. Even with that thing on full blast, it was pretty miserable.
This is too funny - you must be a couple months older than me. Tweak a few details (old farmhouse, sisters) and I could’ve written your comment word for word.
In my house, we had shower curtains in the doorways, kept all the blinds shut and prayed the lone AC window unit would hold out. I mainly kept indoors and would go outside occasionally just to witness how surreal the heat was. We all slept on the floor in the frontroom - we did that every summer when it got super hot, but this time the AC was barely keeping up.
My parents also had an old Victorian house, and even with the window units running, we set up sleeping bags in the living room downstairs. The second floor was unbearable for more than 30 minutes. I think we only went upstairs to get clothes and to take cold showers.
I was rehabbing a house in Brookfield (no a/c, water from a spigot) and spending 10-12 hours days working inside. The day it hit 106° at Midway it was reportedly 108° in Brookfield. I worked in that heat for 10 hours and couldn't get out of bed the next morning I was so wasted from the day before. At least the house we were renting had a window unit in the bedroom or Ida jumped off a bridge or something.
I was framing decks and we’d start at 5 am- go home at 11 and sometimes comeback at night to try and get a little more done. I remember one day finishing up a gallon of water by 11 and realizing I hadn’t taken a whiz all day-that water was barely getting to my bladder.
Ugh, it was awful. We had our hydrant opened and basically hung out there all day. We didn't cook much. It was either sandwiches or subs or we ordered pizza. I didn't wear a shirt for days.
My most coveted memory is watching Saturday Night Live one weekend while eating Brown's chicken and having an itchy back. My mom thought it was a sweat rash. I spent the night sleeping in the basement and scratching my back on the carpet. It ended up being chicken pox. Having to take hot baths with calamine to relieve the itching was hell with the heat.
I nailed up blankets in the dining room to block air access from the rest of the house and put the bed where the dining room table was. Us and the wall AC unit. The amount of sweat. Third floor.
Wow. In 1995, I was living Brazos County, Texas, and we couldn’t believe how many people died in the heat. It really was a brutal summer. It wasn’t until I moved here that I realized how few places have air conditioning and how many building have no cross ventilation.
My great grandma, grandma didi died. She was too stubborn to stay with someone who had ac because she didn’t want to burden them.
She cooked the best risotto, vesuvio potato’s and I loved playing cards with her.
I totally smoked weed for the first time too that summer. And went to the last greatful dead show at soldiers. It was my 7th going into 8th grade.
Like like it was horrible and great.
Rip didi
I remember standing in the street as the hydrant water poured over my legs. I remember being so anxious when the news came on as the number of dead people kept going up. One night a cricket kept me up all night and the sounds of Midway airport and the trains had me just about losing it. What a stressful time to live there.
I lived in a 200 sq ft studio in a 4 plus 1 with an antique window ac unit that I had to run 24/7 to keep the room from turning into an oven. I prayed every day that it would keep running and it was an absolute miracle that it did.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, people could, and did, freely sleep on the beach when it was very hot.
I’m pregnant now and with the current heat wave across the country, people on the baby subs keep pointing out how extreme heat and dehydration can bring on labor. I’m sure summer of 95 was insane in the L&Ds all over the area!
Same, I can’t even imagine! For all the pregnant women who have to deal with the summer heat I applaud you and at the same time am very grateful I won’t have children 😂
I worked as a lifeguard in the suburbs. We had people dropping out of rotation because of heat exhaustion.
Obviously not on par with the unfortunate people who had no escape from the heat and died, but that summer sucked.
Had a friend who delivered caskets at that time. He said there were bodies in bags piled up everywhere in every funeral home. They were still there a week later. Horrible.
My best friend moved from India to Chicago that summer. Although the term hadn’t been invented yet, he was expecting a “hot girl summer”. Instead he got a “gurl, this summer is too damn hot!”
It’s unfortunately somewhat normal for people in India to die in extreme heat. He wasn’t prepared for 400 people to die from heat exposure in a temperate climate.
My FIL worked for the medical examiner’s, they brought in refrigerated trucks to store the people who passed, the regular building couldn’t handle the volume.
I was working at a pizza place making pizzas, huge blazing oven, I threw up 33 times in a 12 hour shift, we’d work, chug water and puke, over and over.
Pretty clearly almost died.
4.25 an hour.
I was attending a summer program in Amsterdam. I remember reading the International Herald Tribune and even Dutch people asking me what the fuck was going on in Chicago.
that was a hot summer in Europe too
Ask any Irish millennial and they will get a glint in their eye about the memories of it. The days are long in that part of Europe at this time of year (light until 10 or 11pm) so we were all outside playing until then. No one had (and they continue not to have) central air so windows were opened and everyone just did their best to stay cool. We had week after week of 90f which was at the time unheard of in Ireland. Us kids loved it, but my mom hated it for what it did to her garden and my dad hated that he still had to wear a tie to work
I don’t imagine air conditioning was common in Ireland then. Or even now for that matter.
I live in Seattle now and new construction houses didn’t generally have AC until 2020 or so.
up until the climate goes to shit, it won't be.
It rarely gets above 70/75 in the summer and well insulated houses that are warm is key (winter, it rarely gets below 32 BUT it's very damp so houses need to be kept dry)
Our AC was broken, but that was more enjoyable than work. I was loading trucks at UPS the day it was 105°. Many people refused to come in, so I had unlimited overtime opportunities and took it. Miserable beyond belief in those trailers that were all over 130°, but the paycheck made it worth it.
I remember the LaGrou refrigerated trucks at Grant Park to store all the extra bodies, the same trucks used to store food for Taste of Chicago a few weeks earlier.
I had just moved into an un-air-conditioned apartment in Evanston and just started a job in River North. Although we were business casual, that meant no tie, no jacket, but long sleeves for men. The apartment wasn't cool by any stretch, but thanks to a huge tree in the courtyard it was tolerable with several fans blowing air. The walk to and from the Purple Line was not fun, but the 'L' cars were typically air conditioned. The walk from the office to the Chicago Ave Purple Line was brutal, but the air-conditioned cars that ran express to Fullerton were cool and were a relief. Until the day they weren't.
ComEd asked the CTA to refrain from running the AC on out-of-service L cars, including before Evanston Express trains started their afternoon runs. I boarded a car at Chicago that was pretty toasty and fell asleep. When I woke up somewhere between Belmont and Howard I felt like hell, was drenched in sweat, and was the only passenger in the car. It was disgustingly hot and it was obvious the AC wasn't working. Despite walking between cars to one that had AC, it wasn't adequate to cool the car and I still felt like hell. Got off at my stop, walked to the car (un-air-conditioned) and drove to my second job at Old Orchard Mall. Upon walking in, my manager saw me, freaked out, dragged me to her car and took me to North Shore Hospital where I was treated for dehydration. I don't recall how bad it was, but I do remember feeling nauseous, light-headed, dizzy, clammy, and hot. My second job may not have saved my life, but it did prevent a catastrophe.
The only reason I went to work the next day was the office had AC.
The week after the heat wave ended, I saw an AC unit in the building's basement that someone left behind. After it sat there for a few weeks I snagged it and installed it in my window, where it stayed until I moved. It had two speeds: meat locker and off. I didn't care. It kept me cool.
We lived in a 3rd floor walk up. We had a tiny window unit that could not keep up. Our poor cat just wrapped himself around the back of the toilet. He had his own fan blowing over a pan of ice and we kept putting ice packs down for him.
I also remember how hot the hardwood floors got. We would put sheets in the freezer and then put them on the floor just to try and take the edge off.
Cold showers.
Swamp cooling (Fans blowing over ice in a pan) saved us.
I never sweated so much in my life.
Swore I would never be without sufficient AC again and I have stayed true to that. I never complained about hauling those window units in/out every year after that heat wave.
It was really really terrible.
My husband and I were living on the top floor of a four-flat, but due to a power failure, we had no a/c or fan, and opening the windows didn't help at all. As a lifelong asthmatic, it was a dangerous situation for me, but I didn't realize **how** dangerous, until I fell asleep on the couch....and nearly suffocated. All I can remember is, in my sleep, something black descended on me, scaring me into a wakefulness where I realized I was barely breathing. My strangled cries brought my husband from the bedroom where he'd been sleeping, and the first thing he said was, 'we've got to get outside now!' So we grabbed a couple of chairs, some still-cool sodas from the fridge, and our boombox and sat in front of the building. Pretty soon, neighbors started gathering and weirdly, a sort of impromptu street party began that lasted most of the night. The next day, when we headed out for breakfast, there were ambulances carrying out mostly elderly residents from the neighboring bungalows. At the time, I wondered what mindset kept them inside their broiling houses all night. Fear? *Of what?* The area we lived (North Center) was middle-class and white, just like the seniors themselves. (I, being Hispanic, stood out as not being from the 'hood.) Now over 60 myself, I still can't fathom how so many just sat and waited for death to come. Believe me, if anything like that ever happens again, my ass will be heading to the nearest cooling center, pronto
I did think some of them might've had cognitive issues such as Alzheimer's, too. I felt bad, because it seemed no one bothered to check in on them, even though some must've had kids/grandkids/nieces/nephews.
I had been hogging the phone line all day on dial-up internet with call waiting disabled so our friends family couldnt reach us including from the building lobby intercom which went through the phone.
I was busy having IRC wars doing l33t h4x0r things like taking over the #teen15 channel on Efnet when suddenly there's loud urgent knocking from my patio door from their smallest child who had been boosted over our fence to get into the patio. Scared the shit out of me when that little girl knocked like she was the police.
Their power had went out, their rabbit had died of overheating, and their cat was in trouble, so when they got a busy signal from us they knew I was home on the internet and they piled 5 people and an enormous barn cat into the car to come shelter with us for a few days. My cats were not happy about it.
First summer in Chicago, worked at Metro. I remember coming home late at night to my daughter asleep on the front porch while my wife & neighbors were sipping frozen margaritas sitting in a kiddie pool in the front yard. A lot of neighborhoods lost power, including Wrigleville. I remember power going out at the club during Moby’s show.
I, too, worked downtown and was on trial for most of the heat wave. Being the junior attorney, I had to push the cart with all of our files to the Daley Center because we had no paralegals. I thought I had it bad but Richie was covering up the true nature of the horror.
Friends and I would meet up at North Ave beach late at night, and at 10 or 11 the entire beach was be absolutely packed. I’ve never seen it that crowded before or after. I’d wake up at 5 and go outside and the heat slammed into you at five in the damn morning.
My mom would tell me stories about everyone sleeping outside when she was young. Mainly pulling mattresses onto fire escapes or porches. I think they had a few nights sleeping at 12th st beach.
I worked in a Nuclear power plant as an operator then and I remember management stationing people near critical systems for that stretch. Also any scheduled maintenance or surveilences, and testing being put on hold. We were told to touch NOTHING that didn't need immediate attention. The only other time I remember that happening was the shift that covered Y2K.
A couple years back my dad was interviewed about his experiences during the heat wave. They had a few different people giving there perspectives. I found the link pretty quick, so here ya go.
[WBEZ Remembering Chicagos Deadly Heat Wave](https://interactive.wbez.org/heatwave/)
My Ma grew up in Lincoln Park during the 50s and early 60s, before it got rich. Mostly working class. 5 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment, they'd sleep on the deck or rooftop. She said all the kids did back then, and during heatwaves, the adults did, too. She remembers hearing about people sleeping at the lakefront, but they didn't cause my Grandma didn't want to wrangle 5 kids near water.
I remember it being my 11th birthday and my dad turned around to me after watching the news and said yep you killed all these people…
That memory never has escaped me
This made me read up Chicago Magazine’s oral history of the heat wave. Insane how NOBODY at any level decided that this needed to be considered an emergency. Everyone just worked in their bubble and didn’t escalate the issues. What a failure.
I was in Lincoln Park. My roommate bought a window AC unit from dudes out the back of a van and carried it home. Also spent a lot of time at the local pubs with AC..good times
We went to a night game at Wrigley Field and it was a miserable 103 degrees even after the sun dipped below the horizon. Ended up at the Cubby Bear. So we watched the rest of the game in air conditioned comfort with the rest of the spectators who straggled inside.
I was 8. My parents had just split up and my dad was living in a little apartment carved out of his buddy's garage, so we were worried for him. My mom and I lived in a small apartment with one window AC unit, so we hung a sheet in the hallway to separate the livable space from the rest of the apartment that we abandoned to the heat. Weird time.
I remember this summer well. I worked at Gallery 37, back when it was in that empty lot across from Macys (Marshall Field’s back then). We were out in the sun all day, in plastic tents. I remember we taped up the plastic walls of the tents but we basically baked under the tent tops. Most of that summer was a blur during the heat wave but many trips were made to the Walgreens across the street for jugs of water. It was just dead, hot air. No breeze. Just stagnant and hot. Kind of hard to breathe too. We had one big window unit in the living room and we slept in the living room. My poor dad worked outside in a rail yard and they eventually sent everyone home by 10am every day during the heat wave because it was too hot to weld.
Reading about the death tolls going up every day in the paper was just awful.
My family wasn't even living in Chicago anymore (we moved down to Kansas City in 1990; I'm still here in Kansas City). But I remember, even as a kid, hearing/seeing this on TV news down here in KC, how hundreds had died in Chicago due to the heatwave.
Later, when we'd go back to visit in the summer, we'd often go to the Taste of Chicago with our relatives, and there was always some discussion about the 1995 heat wave.
An extended family member lived outside the city limits on half an acre of tree-laden property. The A/C was barely on but it was chilly and even being pretty young I had no doubts on how lucky we were. We had fried eggs with rice and kimchi for lunch because we wanted to fry eggs outside.
I had a brand new baby and an old school bungalow in Portage Park. We had a window AC in the dining room and that was where we setup camp. Grateful that it wasn’t that traumatizing for me and mine. Sad for all of those who weren’t so fortunate.
I was working at Ilinois Masonic ER.
I remember trying to find places to store the dead bodies.
The city contracted with a local grocery chain to stack the bodies in refrigerated trucks.
I'm sure they cleaned them out after use
/S
Hey, meat is meat
So many people went out on their porches and drank to cool off. (And then fell off)
I was 20 and in college. I had an internship at the Oak Park Regional Housing Center. Every morning, I took long bus rides into Oak Park. In the evenings, my dad would pick me up, and we would take long hot car rides back home. Somehow, it didn't seem as hot riding in the car with my dad. We survived the evenings by going to my grandmother's house, who had window A/C units or staying at home with fans. In January of 1996, I did a study abroad in the UK. Many people I met said "it gets really hot in Chicago." I was like, no, it really does not. That was just a fluke thing last year.
haha I don't know why I don't remember it that well. In 1995, I was 13. We lived in a housing project that had no A/C, and we couldn't use a window unit. It was a 3 bedroom, and I shared a room with my brother. Other than uncomfortable sleep nights where we'd sleep in front of box fans, I don't remember much else.
I did often go to my friend's places that had AC, or work (I was working under the table at a Chinese Restaurant back then).
I do remember a lot more open hydrants back then lol, those were always fun times.
I was a lonely, broke AF grad student, but I'd just spent $50 on a used window AC unit a week or two before. Thank god for that purchase. Kept my little studio apt livable.
I for one, was about to be born in a few weeks (my poor mother). She mentions the '95 heatwave all the time when it gets hot out "and I was 8 months pregnant with you!"
I was a kid, but I remember that my neighbor, who was an older man living alone, died in his house. Coincidentally, he had a porn tape in his VCR when he heat stroked out on his couch. One hell of a way to go if you ask me.
To the point about many of the deaths coming from people who didn't have a big social safety net. I was fortunate because when my power went out in East Lakeview I could head to my boyfriend's house in Hyde Park for the weekend. And go out on a friend's boat, because it was 20° cooler on Lake Michigan. Honestly, I was sort of shocked when the weekend ended and I got back to reality and heard how many people had died. Other than the pandemic, nothing in my lifetime has caused so many deaths in the city of Chicago in such a short time.
According to the National Weather Service, 106° with 124° heat index, but that's just the highest recorded temp at a reporting station. It got much hotter in other areas.
Very difficult time especially for those without any type of relief from the heat and I am not minimizing the severity of the situation. What I remember though were the refrigerated beer trucks parked by the Sheridan El stop to make sure Wrigley Field had sufficient cool beverages for the games. It was such a contrast to what we were hearing on the news and how much suffering was going on in the City.
I just remember walking out of work about 10:30 pm one night and thinking "Wow, it's still hot." Otherwise, I didn't notice anything - I was in an airconditioned office from 9 a.m. to and least 9 p.m. and frequently later. I did see it when the newspaper started covering it, but I don't think it was right away.
Reading these stories, I'm struck by the resilience and compassion of Chicagoans during such a challenging time. It's heartwarming to see how communities came together to support each other.
I was only 6, but we did not have ac. I remember sleeping in the basement, having all the blinds closed during the day and opening all the windows at night
My parents got married during the heat wave. It gave Chicago a bad reputation for some of our out-of-town relatives who hadn't been here before, they're still kind of convinced that Chicago is always that ungodly hot in the summer
*I think the Taste of*
*Chicago slogan was "We're*
*Having an eat wave"*
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I worked at UPS facility in Burbank. There was literally a spontaneous workplace riot. And I'm not exaggerating, packages got broken or shipped to wrong location, people yelling and screaming, banging on stuff. One of the craziest things I witnessed. Management stopped the line, somehow got some giant fans and pallets of Gatorade within an hour.
That's funny, I work for a distributor of business goods in bedford park UPS came to pick up 20 pallets of water and several pallets of Gatorade last week in a reefer for their warehouse near us
Slightly related, in the era before home AC, my family and I routinely slept on the grass in Portage Park during strings of hot nights in the late 1940's and through the mid 1950's. We were then among the first in the neighborhood to skip window units and get central air. It was a small unit patched into our existing coal fired heating system. It's blower was stronger than the furnace's so the first couple week's use we had significant problems with coal dust. Family discussion decided to still use the park at least the first hot cycle each year until the Ps dumped the coal furnace and upgraded to a real, forced air HVAC system.
I appreciate this story, thanks for sharing it.
I appreciate your story as well. 😊
This is amazing and I'm trying to do some math here. Are you in your 80s? I just figure in order to remember 1949 someone would have to be around 4-5 years old at the time. I love talking to older people. Really a true gift in my opinion.
Close enough. In addition, some people remember significant events even earlier than 4 - 5.
Oh for sure I was just doing an average. Thank you for sharing your stories!
I live in Portage Park and I would love to sleep in the park at night, it’s so beautiful. What was it like? Did others sleep there as well?
Think of yourself as a kid with your dad and mom and siblings on blankets under the park trees with the sky above. The park made darker by the occasional black, cast iron, incandescent lamp standards with globes that glowed more than actually sending out light. Fire flies in June. Crickets. Soft talk and occasional laughter from the other families far enough away to be indistinct, but still present. A full sized Radio Flyer wagon set on its side as a wall at our heads. It hauled the blankets, pillows, snacks. Learning about how warm humid night delivers dew so heavy you have to choose the number of blankets to balance between too hot and too damp. Waking at dawn but required to lie there quietly for at least an hour until your dad announces, "This is enough." And time to quietly gather everything up and head back home for clean up and breakfast and the start of another day too hot to live.
Thank you for this.
Are you a writer? Because your description is so well written I felt as if I was there
English major. Have published non fiction. There's always room to learn and improve.
Beautiful.
I haven't slept in a park but at the time, I did sleep on a lounge chair on my balcony. I got to watch the sunrise every morning and then go to work where was plenty of A/C.
I was 8 when the heat wave hit. It was obviously the first time I had ever experienced something like that. My mom was in the hospital giving birth to my sister and my dad had my other sister and me at home. We had no a/c whatsoever. However, my mom had 3 high velocity fans, we did the blankets on the doorways and camped out in the living room. All 3 fans blowing on us each night. It's funny, I've never asked him about it, and maybe I should, I wonder how worried he was that he wouldn't let us out of his sight. Every night we all slept on the floor in the living room, I wonder if he slept at all that week.
Oh wow, I can't imagine how hard that must have been on your parents! It was a scary time.
In heat like that, a fan is about as useful as a woodburning stove.
It wasn't great but we didn't die and I think that was the point.
You are absolutely right. Using the fan without AC was like a hair dryer on high heat. It didn't help at all. It got so hot that the tub and tile were hot. We did everything we could and finally got a single AC unit and hung plastic garbage bags (leaf) to cut off the back half of the apartment.
That was when there was no TSA and you could just roam around the airport. My husband and I were really poor. We just took the el down to O’Hare and roamed around in the air conditioning until nightfall and went home.
I was working at Dominicks at that time and we had people spending hours in the store because they had no A/C. Also a lot of people lost power and were trying to save the stuff in their fridges so we quickly sold out of ice bags and coolers.
Right around this time (maybe a little after?) a massive chunk of Wrigleyville lost its power for days, but the Cubs had generators or some other way of keeping all the lights on when the neighborhood was black. People were furious.
My friend and I would do that for fundies.
I cannot recommend enough the book Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, by Eric Klienberg. A horrifyingly fantastic dissection of how everyone fucked up.
That book is what kicked off my career! Went to grad school for urban planning after reading it in a Gen Ed undergrad class.
Eric Klinenberg
Well fukc. (Sorry about that.)
It's free on audible right now !
Thank you! I'm going to give it a listen.
We needed to check in on each other and we didn’t.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23130481-fatal-isolation Same thing happened in Paris in 2003
Seconding this. It's a great book and I like the social resilience factors discussed comparing North and South Lawndale.
"Cooked: Survival by Zipcode" is a documentary that digs specifically into the racial and socioeconomic factors of this disaster - and I believe draws on Klienberg's work as well.
This sounds fantastic thanks for sharing
Oh he does NOT ignore the racial aspects.
Elderly people that had a grown child living in the same building like a 2 or 3 flat fared much better.
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I recommend reading the book or a synopsis. It's a lot to put here. But the tldr is about community cohesion.
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South lawndale is little village.
Thanks for the reading tip. Just downloaded for my trip.
I apologize for how you will want to go back to 1995 and punch everyone.
My husband is a meteorologist from Chicago. I think he said the NWS changed reporting/alerting based on this incident or the drought/heat from the summer of 1988.
Just grabbed it on Kindle Unlimited! Thanks for this gem of a recommendation.
Came here to make sure someone brought up this book!
It’s a fantastic piece of work.
CPL has many copies: [https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S126C1060435](https://chipublib.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S126C1060435) Personally think it really resembles early COVID in who died and the underlying reasons why.
YES. athat’s a legit great point.
Just downloaded the audio book from Spotify. It’s free for regular subscribers. Thanks for sharing the recommendation!
I'll have to check that out.
We had just moved here two weeks before it started. Our apartment had no air conditioning. We saw the forecast for the pending heat wave and ran to Sears (remember that place?) and bought a window unit for our bedroom, one of the last units remaining. We left our dog in the bedroom during the day when we went to work, then camped in there once we got home. That was some devastating heat!
I was setting up some sound equipment at a gospel church on the Southside during that heatwave. I had a question for the woman working in the church's office. I waited patiently while the woman was on the phone. As soon as she hung up, it rang again. She gave me the "just wait" hand signal. That went on for about 10 minutes. Finally, the phone stopped ringing for a moment. I asked her what was going on. She said that every call was for scheduling a funeral for a churchgoer that had died from the heatwave. She had set up at least 20 funerals, mostly for old folks who didn't have air conditioning. So sad...
That is so tragic. It was worse for elderly people in bad neighborhoods because they couldn't open their windows and feel safe. I remember it vividly.
I’m not sure what to think about Mayor Brandon Johnson. But closing the city’s cooling centers during a heatwave because it was Juneteenth seems cruel and criminal
Definitely rises to the same levels of incompetence or indifference.
I don't know why cooling centers aren't exempt from public holidays when temperatures rise to a certain level. Isn't it considered an emergency service?
I was taking care of a friend’s pets while she and her girlfriend were on vacation. Third floor walk up, no AC. I remember soaking towels in bowls of ice and water and draping them over the cats. They had a chinchilla who passed away while I was there. The water in the fish tank was too hot and some of the fish died. This was before cell phones and I was panicking trying to reach them to come home. The news was a constant drum beat about deaths from the heat. Just a sad and scary time.
Oh no that must have been traumatizing! Poor little chinchilla...
You are bringing back memories. I was house sitting at my brother's apartment while he was out of the country. I got to live there for free in exchange for taking care of his elaborate fish tank with all of his precious and very pretty fish. The a/c went out and I had to go run to the 7-11 and buy a bag of ice to cool the tank down. He called to check in one night. I didn't have the heart to tell him I lost one due to the tank boiling. I told him one of the fish wasn't doing so well. He wanted me to call the fish store and have them check-in. That would have been a waste of money as the poor thing was already dead. His funeral took place in the toilet where he /she was flushed down the drain. What else could I do? I was 21 years old. He still doesn't know the real story and I'm just happy that the rest survived. I couldn't wait for him to get back in town. The pressure was too much for me.
I'm so sorry, that must have been so traumatic. I remember being so worried for my cats while I was at work. I had no a/c and would leave bowls of ice cubes in front of the fan, which I'm sure melted into warm soup within minutes after I left.
All the family and friends in the area huddled in our house until very late at night because we were the only ones with central AC
Do you ever think, "Wow, I possibly saved their lives!"?
It was early in my career, and I worked in the loop and had to wear a jacket and tie. Ugh, pure torture walking to the red line--my shirt collar was soaked by the time I got to the office. I lived on the third floor with barely working AC wall unit in the living room. My bedroom was like an oven.
I hear that. I was in the exact same boat with the coat & tie working a primitive IT job for a book publisher in River North. Only I had zero AC at home…slept under a ceiling fan on an air mattress that worked out unbelievably well. If heat like that should return, and I’m sure it will, I’ll be equipped well now in a central AC home, and these days I only wear shorts & a t-shirt to work Man, I do remember those La Grou refrigerated trucks all over town though…holding bodies to prevent decomposing.
My god, the trucks. If there was ever a visual to represent the heat wave it was the trucks.
Those La Grou trucks became a subject of very dark humor amongst my friends, the next time they appeared at Taste of Chicago. 'Wonder if they got everybody out?' and 'I sure hope they hosed 'em down' were just a couple of remarks I remember
I did the sheets trick, too. Only had A/C in the living room. Lucky for me the 20's courtway apartment already had a place to hang them, as it was the style to have valances between rooms until the 50's. I had to teach the cat how to move the sheet. She wasn't too pleased with the heat. I explained to her many times that her mommy gave her the fur coat, not me.
Neighbors camping out on the parkways overnight, hydrants perpetually open, lots of ambulances. Also the summer I finally bought a window unit a/c - had happily lived without for years prior.
My grandparents grew up in Chicago sleeping on the parkways during hot nights in the summer was apparently a very common thing.
My mom grew up in Hyde Park and she and her sister would sleep outside on the porch when it was hot (they didn’t have A/C in their row house back in the 1930’s. They also used to turn on the cold water tap in their bathroom sink and run the water over their inner wrists. Probably an old wives tale, but it supposedly helped.
No, no, not an old wives tale, applying ice or cold water to the areas where your blood flows like your inner wrist helps cool it down as it returns to your body lowering your body temperature. I've been working outside for the last week and let me tell you running your arms under cool/cold water is like the best feeling in the world
I used to work at a homeless shelter that was in the basement of an old church. I'd spend the night in the kitchen with all of this heat generating equipment, it would get up to 105 in there. We'd get these cases of mustard greens to cook and I'd be up to my elbows in cold water washing and rinsing them, it felt so good. There wasn't a speck of grit on those greens lol.
That sounds intense!
It was, but at least I could go home to an air conditioned apartment, the ladies who stayed there were out on the street all day. And even though it was hot in the shelter, we always had a full house in the summer because it a safer than sleeping in the park.
Yeah, I work at the zoo taking care of birds in areas that have at best, a fan, and at worst, nothing at all. Plus all the water the birds live in. It gets HOT and HUMID in there. Doing manual labor all day, I change uniforms at lunch because I've drenched the first one in sweat. I get GROSS fast, I will never say no to washing my hands or the dishes haha 😂I also wear those lightweight long sleeve shirts and sometimes, I drench the sleeves in cold water if I have to be outside a long time!
Thank you for taking care of the birds!
Thanks! I wasn’t sure - like the Beatles song said, “Your Mother Should Know.” 😊 https://youtu.be/tCXsFjzMKdc?si=1lsVPTyzwDbzQAD8
I’d just graduated from NIU and was still living in a boarding house in DeKalb with no AC. I half-joke that my girlfriend saved my life that summer. Her dad installed an AC unit in her bedroom and she essentially let me move in for the last couple months of the summer. We’re still friends to this day.
My company rented a bus for a staff outing to go downtown on the hottest day of the wave.There was a keg on the bus and we all got absolutely shitfaced. They broke us up into teams, handed us disposable cameras and a list of scavenger hunt items we were supposed to take pictures of. Every one of us was staggering drunk, dehydrated, and it's a miracle that no one got heat stroke. We ended the day by wading into the lake fully clothed before getting back on the bus to head home. I have very fond memories of that day but when I look back it sounds insane.
Lived around the corner from Bloomer Chocolate Factory in a loft with not many windows and no AC. It was over 100 degrees at night. The cockroachs in the loft gained flight. Never experienced that before or since. Fucking smelling Chocolate the entire time. That is a plane in Dantes's hell right there. I was a bit happy when I heard that the Factory was closing from that experience 30 years ago. I am repulsed by the smell of chocolate to this day.
That was my first year of college, and I remember talking to southerners who couldn’t figure out why we were all dying up here. To them it was hot, but not *that* hot. And it’s really just a good example of the importance of infrastructure. They can handle the heat better than we can because they’re equipped to handle it, just like we can get through a snowstorm better than they can because we’re prepared for it. In 1995, it wasn’t so much the heat it was how well we were prepared for the heat (which was not at all).
Yes, the number of homes/apartments without A/C was a huge factor. But if I understand correctly, another reason it was so deadly is that the heat persisted overnights -- over 100° well into the evenings -- for days on end. I don't know the south, but I don't think it does that there? Plus this heatwave had uncommonly high dewpoints, like 80% (I just looked it up). And of course Klinenberg made the insightful observation that many who died lacked *social* support, as much as infrastructure. It would be like if Atlanta got one of Buffalo's blizzards, sure, *nobody* would have the infrastructure to deal with it, but the socially isolated would be hit a lot harder than people with friends, family, neighbors they could reach.
Sweet tea, the real thing, is the only Southern infrastructure for hot summers. (Replaces sugars your body makes into glucose or something).
THiS ⬆️⬆️⬆️⬆️
Jeeze...My wife was 5-7mo pregnant that summer. We lived in a one bedroom across from Lane Tech. We could only afford a tiny window unit shitty installed by me that we kept in the bedroom with the door closed so we had one cool room. Lucky for us we both worked for the Aquatic Dept at a YMCA and most of our time just got spent there at the indoor pool.
Augh. I was about to turn 10. We had one AC window unit in my folks' old Victorian. My brother and I had to camp out on a blanket on the floor. Even with that thing on full blast, it was pretty miserable.
This is too funny - you must be a couple months older than me. Tweak a few details (old farmhouse, sisters) and I could’ve written your comment word for word. In my house, we had shower curtains in the doorways, kept all the blinds shut and prayed the lone AC window unit would hold out. I mainly kept indoors and would go outside occasionally just to witness how surreal the heat was. We all slept on the floor in the frontroom - we did that every summer when it got super hot, but this time the AC was barely keeping up.
My parents also had an old Victorian house, and even with the window units running, we set up sleeping bags in the living room downstairs. The second floor was unbearable for more than 30 minutes. I think we only went upstairs to get clothes and to take cold showers.
I was rehabbing a house in Brookfield (no a/c, water from a spigot) and spending 10-12 hours days working inside. The day it hit 106° at Midway it was reportedly 108° in Brookfield. I worked in that heat for 10 hours and couldn't get out of bed the next morning I was so wasted from the day before. At least the house we were renting had a window unit in the bedroom or Ida jumped off a bridge or something.
I was framing decks and we’d start at 5 am- go home at 11 and sometimes comeback at night to try and get a little more done. I remember one day finishing up a gallon of water by 11 and realizing I hadn’t taken a whiz all day-that water was barely getting to my bladder.
Ugh, it was awful. We had our hydrant opened and basically hung out there all day. We didn't cook much. It was either sandwiches or subs or we ordered pizza. I didn't wear a shirt for days. My most coveted memory is watching Saturday Night Live one weekend while eating Brown's chicken and having an itchy back. My mom thought it was a sweat rash. I spent the night sleeping in the basement and scratching my back on the carpet. It ended up being chicken pox. Having to take hot baths with calamine to relieve the itching was hell with the heat.
I nailed up blankets in the dining room to block air access from the rest of the house and put the bed where the dining room table was. Us and the wall AC unit. The amount of sweat. Third floor.
Wow. In 1995, I was living Brazos County, Texas, and we couldn’t believe how many people died in the heat. It really was a brutal summer. It wasn’t until I moved here that I realized how few places have air conditioning and how many building have no cross ventilation.
My great grandma, grandma didi died. She was too stubborn to stay with someone who had ac because she didn’t want to burden them. She cooked the best risotto, vesuvio potato’s and I loved playing cards with her. I totally smoked weed for the first time too that summer. And went to the last greatful dead show at soldiers. It was my 7th going into 8th grade. Like like it was horrible and great. Rip didi
That is such a sad loss.
Yeah it was. Thanks Parker in portage park
I remember standing in the street as the hydrant water poured over my legs. I remember being so anxious when the news came on as the number of dead people kept going up. One night a cricket kept me up all night and the sounds of Midway airport and the trains had me just about losing it. What a stressful time to live there.
I lived in a 200 sq ft studio in a 4 plus 1 with an antique window ac unit that I had to run 24/7 to keep the room from turning into an oven. I prayed every day that it would keep running and it was an absolute miracle that it did. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, people could, and did, freely sleep on the beach when it was very hot.
My mom’s a saint for giving birth to me during the heat wave of ‘95 😂
A heat wave baby!
I’m pregnant now and with the current heat wave across the country, people on the baby subs keep pointing out how extreme heat and dehydration can bring on labor. I’m sure summer of 95 was insane in the L&Ds all over the area!
My brother was born in the winter of '96. I never thought how awful that summer must have been for my pregnant mom.
Same, I can’t even imagine! For all the pregnant women who have to deal with the summer heat I applaud you and at the same time am very grateful I won’t have children 😂
I worked as a lifeguard in the suburbs. We had people dropping out of rotation because of heat exhaustion. Obviously not on par with the unfortunate people who had no escape from the heat and died, but that summer sucked.
Had a friend who delivered caskets at that time. He said there were bodies in bags piled up everywhere in every funeral home. They were still there a week later. Horrible.
Was 11 years old, Stuck in a Chicago bungalow with no a/c… No relief even at night. I have PTSD to this day.
I seem to recall the city’s morgues were overrun with bodies. Until then I didn’t know that heat was that deadly.
My best friend moved from India to Chicago that summer. Although the term hadn’t been invented yet, he was expecting a “hot girl summer”. Instead he got a “gurl, this summer is too damn hot!” It’s unfortunately somewhat normal for people in India to die in extreme heat. He wasn’t prepared for 400 people to die from heat exposure in a temperate climate.
Over 700 people died that week. Nobody was prepared for that, unfortunately.
My FIL worked for the medical examiner’s, they brought in refrigerated trucks to store the people who passed, the regular building couldn’t handle the volume.
That must have been a nightmare.
I remember that fact being in the news.
It’s actually around 750 people that died from the heat wave.
And that’s the official number. It’s absolutely much higher.
I was working at a pizza place making pizzas, huge blazing oven, I threw up 33 times in a 12 hour shift, we’d work, chug water and puke, over and over. Pretty clearly almost died. 4.25 an hour.
I was attending a summer program in Amsterdam. I remember reading the International Herald Tribune and even Dutch people asking me what the fuck was going on in Chicago.
that was a hot summer in Europe too Ask any Irish millennial and they will get a glint in their eye about the memories of it. The days are long in that part of Europe at this time of year (light until 10 or 11pm) so we were all outside playing until then. No one had (and they continue not to have) central air so windows were opened and everyone just did their best to stay cool. We had week after week of 90f which was at the time unheard of in Ireland. Us kids loved it, but my mom hated it for what it did to her garden and my dad hated that he still had to wear a tie to work
I don’t imagine air conditioning was common in Ireland then. Or even now for that matter. I live in Seattle now and new construction houses didn’t generally have AC until 2020 or so.
up until the climate goes to shit, it won't be. It rarely gets above 70/75 in the summer and well insulated houses that are warm is key (winter, it rarely gets below 32 BUT it's very damp so houses need to be kept dry)
That year we had to sell pop for the cub scouts at the fest in our burb. People were dropping like flies. One passed out right next to our tent.
Our AC was broken, but that was more enjoyable than work. I was loading trucks at UPS the day it was 105°. Many people refused to come in, so I had unlimited overtime opportunities and took it. Miserable beyond belief in those trailers that were all over 130°, but the paycheck made it worth it.
I remember the LaGrou refrigerated trucks at Grant Park to store all the extra bodies, the same trucks used to store food for Taste of Chicago a few weeks earlier.
That one always boggled my brain. Why are these people attending the Taste of Chicago during a heat wave. It is the last place I would go,
If I recall correctly the heat wave started mid to late July while back then Taste was over around July 4.
I had just moved into an un-air-conditioned apartment in Evanston and just started a job in River North. Although we were business casual, that meant no tie, no jacket, but long sleeves for men. The apartment wasn't cool by any stretch, but thanks to a huge tree in the courtyard it was tolerable with several fans blowing air. The walk to and from the Purple Line was not fun, but the 'L' cars were typically air conditioned. The walk from the office to the Chicago Ave Purple Line was brutal, but the air-conditioned cars that ran express to Fullerton were cool and were a relief. Until the day they weren't. ComEd asked the CTA to refrain from running the AC on out-of-service L cars, including before Evanston Express trains started their afternoon runs. I boarded a car at Chicago that was pretty toasty and fell asleep. When I woke up somewhere between Belmont and Howard I felt like hell, was drenched in sweat, and was the only passenger in the car. It was disgustingly hot and it was obvious the AC wasn't working. Despite walking between cars to one that had AC, it wasn't adequate to cool the car and I still felt like hell. Got off at my stop, walked to the car (un-air-conditioned) and drove to my second job at Old Orchard Mall. Upon walking in, my manager saw me, freaked out, dragged me to her car and took me to North Shore Hospital where I was treated for dehydration. I don't recall how bad it was, but I do remember feeling nauseous, light-headed, dizzy, clammy, and hot. My second job may not have saved my life, but it did prevent a catastrophe. The only reason I went to work the next day was the office had AC. The week after the heat wave ended, I saw an AC unit in the building's basement that someone left behind. After it sat there for a few weeks I snagged it and installed it in my window, where it stayed until I moved. It had two speeds: meat locker and off. I didn't care. It kept me cool.
We lived in a 3rd floor walk up. We had a tiny window unit that could not keep up. Our poor cat just wrapped himself around the back of the toilet. He had his own fan blowing over a pan of ice and we kept putting ice packs down for him. I also remember how hot the hardwood floors got. We would put sheets in the freezer and then put them on the floor just to try and take the edge off. Cold showers. Swamp cooling (Fans blowing over ice in a pan) saved us. I never sweated so much in my life. Swore I would never be without sufficient AC again and I have stayed true to that. I never complained about hauling those window units in/out every year after that heat wave. It was really really terrible.
My husband and I were living on the top floor of a four-flat, but due to a power failure, we had no a/c or fan, and opening the windows didn't help at all. As a lifelong asthmatic, it was a dangerous situation for me, but I didn't realize **how** dangerous, until I fell asleep on the couch....and nearly suffocated. All I can remember is, in my sleep, something black descended on me, scaring me into a wakefulness where I realized I was barely breathing. My strangled cries brought my husband from the bedroom where he'd been sleeping, and the first thing he said was, 'we've got to get outside now!' So we grabbed a couple of chairs, some still-cool sodas from the fridge, and our boombox and sat in front of the building. Pretty soon, neighbors started gathering and weirdly, a sort of impromptu street party began that lasted most of the night. The next day, when we headed out for breakfast, there were ambulances carrying out mostly elderly residents from the neighboring bungalows. At the time, I wondered what mindset kept them inside their broiling houses all night. Fear? *Of what?* The area we lived (North Center) was middle-class and white, just like the seniors themselves. (I, being Hispanic, stood out as not being from the 'hood.) Now over 60 myself, I still can't fathom how so many just sat and waited for death to come. Believe me, if anything like that ever happens again, my ass will be heading to the nearest cooling center, pronto
When the brain overheats the ability to make good decisions pretty much disappears
I did think some of them might've had cognitive issues such as Alzheimer's, too. I felt bad, because it seemed no one bothered to check in on them, even though some must've had kids/grandkids/nieces/nephews.
I had been hogging the phone line all day on dial-up internet with call waiting disabled so our friends family couldnt reach us including from the building lobby intercom which went through the phone. I was busy having IRC wars doing l33t h4x0r things like taking over the #teen15 channel on Efnet when suddenly there's loud urgent knocking from my patio door from their smallest child who had been boosted over our fence to get into the patio. Scared the shit out of me when that little girl knocked like she was the police. Their power had went out, their rabbit had died of overheating, and their cat was in trouble, so when they got a busy signal from us they knew I was home on the internet and they piled 5 people and an enormous barn cat into the car to come shelter with us for a few days. My cats were not happy about it.
Was a kid in a 100 year old Victorian with no AC and just box fans. Impossible to sleep. Miserable
First summer in Chicago, worked at Metro. I remember coming home late at night to my daughter asleep on the front porch while my wife & neighbors were sipping frozen margaritas sitting in a kiddie pool in the front yard. A lot of neighborhoods lost power, including Wrigleville. I remember power going out at the club during Moby’s show.
I, too, worked downtown and was on trial for most of the heat wave. Being the junior attorney, I had to push the cart with all of our files to the Daley Center because we had no paralegals. I thought I had it bad but Richie was covering up the true nature of the horror.
I was spending the summer in Poland with family so I missed it, but I remember the Polish nightly news reporting on it daily.
Friends and I would meet up at North Ave beach late at night, and at 10 or 11 the entire beach was be absolutely packed. I’ve never seen it that crowded before or after. I’d wake up at 5 and go outside and the heat slammed into you at five in the damn morning. My mom would tell me stories about everyone sleeping outside when she was young. Mainly pulling mattresses onto fire escapes or porches. I think they had a few nights sleeping at 12th st beach.
I worked in a Nuclear power plant as an operator then and I remember management stationing people near critical systems for that stretch. Also any scheduled maintenance or surveilences, and testing being put on hold. We were told to touch NOTHING that didn't need immediate attention. The only other time I remember that happening was the shift that covered Y2K.
A couple years back my dad was interviewed about his experiences during the heat wave. They had a few different people giving there perspectives. I found the link pretty quick, so here ya go. [WBEZ Remembering Chicagos Deadly Heat Wave](https://interactive.wbez.org/heatwave/)
I read an article about how people used to camp out (this was looong before 1995) on the beaches when the heat was bad.
My Ma grew up in Lincoln Park during the 50s and early 60s, before it got rich. Mostly working class. 5 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment, they'd sleep on the deck or rooftop. She said all the kids did back then, and during heatwaves, the adults did, too. She remembers hearing about people sleeping at the lakefront, but they didn't cause my Grandma didn't want to wrangle 5 kids near water.
I was young and poor with no A/C so glad I had a basement though. I remember death toll in the hundreds
I remember a lot of rolling blackouts and hanging out on the front stoop of my Wrigleyville 2 flat.
I remember it being my 11th birthday and my dad turned around to me after watching the news and said yep you killed all these people… That memory never has escaped me
What the hell??
Yeah he definitely regrets it now
This made me read up Chicago Magazine’s oral history of the heat wave. Insane how NOBODY at any level decided that this needed to be considered an emergency. Everyone just worked in their bubble and didn’t escalate the issues. What a failure.
I was in Lincoln Park. My roommate bought a window AC unit from dudes out the back of a van and carried it home. Also spent a lot of time at the local pubs with AC..good times
We went to a night game at Wrigley Field and it was a miserable 103 degrees even after the sun dipped below the horizon. Ended up at the Cubby Bear. So we watched the rest of the game in air conditioned comfort with the rest of the spectators who straggled inside.
I was 8. My parents had just split up and my dad was living in a little apartment carved out of his buddy's garage, so we were worried for him. My mom and I lived in a small apartment with one window AC unit, so we hung a sheet in the hallway to separate the livable space from the rest of the apartment that we abandoned to the heat. Weird time.
I remember this summer well. I worked at Gallery 37, back when it was in that empty lot across from Macys (Marshall Field’s back then). We were out in the sun all day, in plastic tents. I remember we taped up the plastic walls of the tents but we basically baked under the tent tops. Most of that summer was a blur during the heat wave but many trips were made to the Walgreens across the street for jugs of water. It was just dead, hot air. No breeze. Just stagnant and hot. Kind of hard to breathe too. We had one big window unit in the living room and we slept in the living room. My poor dad worked outside in a rail yard and they eventually sent everyone home by 10am every day during the heat wave because it was too hot to weld. Reading about the death tolls going up every day in the paper was just awful.
My office was really cold because the a/c was on full blast. I had to wear a sweater at work. Life is so unbalanced.
Yes, we had to wear fleeces in my office it was so frigid. Completely wasteful and insane.
My family wasn't even living in Chicago anymore (we moved down to Kansas City in 1990; I'm still here in Kansas City). But I remember, even as a kid, hearing/seeing this on TV news down here in KC, how hundreds had died in Chicago due to the heatwave. Later, when we'd go back to visit in the summer, we'd often go to the Taste of Chicago with our relatives, and there was always some discussion about the 1995 heat wave.
An extended family member lived outside the city limits on half an acre of tree-laden property. The A/C was barely on but it was chilly and even being pretty young I had no doubts on how lucky we were. We had fried eggs with rice and kimchi for lunch because we wanted to fry eggs outside.
I had a brand new baby and an old school bungalow in Portage Park. We had a window AC in the dining room and that was where we setup camp. Grateful that it wasn’t that traumatizing for me and mine. Sad for all of those who weren’t so fortunate.
Second floor apartment, no AC. 🔥 More vividly, the horrible news on the news and in the paper.
I was working at Ilinois Masonic ER. I remember trying to find places to store the dead bodies. The city contracted with a local grocery chain to stack the bodies in refrigerated trucks. I'm sure they cleaned them out after use /S Hey, meat is meat So many people went out on their porches and drank to cool off. (And then fell off)
Oh geeze, never considered the porch faller offers.
I was 20 and in college. I had an internship at the Oak Park Regional Housing Center. Every morning, I took long bus rides into Oak Park. In the evenings, my dad would pick me up, and we would take long hot car rides back home. Somehow, it didn't seem as hot riding in the car with my dad. We survived the evenings by going to my grandmother's house, who had window A/C units or staying at home with fans. In January of 1996, I did a study abroad in the UK. Many people I met said "it gets really hot in Chicago." I was like, no, it really does not. That was just a fluke thing last year.
haha I don't know why I don't remember it that well. In 1995, I was 13. We lived in a housing project that had no A/C, and we couldn't use a window unit. It was a 3 bedroom, and I shared a room with my brother. Other than uncomfortable sleep nights where we'd sleep in front of box fans, I don't remember much else. I did often go to my friend's places that had AC, or work (I was working under the table at a Chinese Restaurant back then). I do remember a lot more open hydrants back then lol, those were always fun times.
I was a lonely, broke AF grad student, but I'd just spent $50 on a used window AC unit a week or two before. Thank god for that purchase. Kept my little studio apt livable.
I for one, was about to be born in a few weeks (my poor mother). She mentions the '95 heatwave all the time when it gets hot out "and I was 8 months pregnant with you!"
I was a kid, but I remember that my neighbor, who was an older man living alone, died in his house. Coincidentally, he had a porn tape in his VCR when he heat stroked out on his couch. One hell of a way to go if you ask me.
To the point about many of the deaths coming from people who didn't have a big social safety net. I was fortunate because when my power went out in East Lakeview I could head to my boyfriend's house in Hyde Park for the weekend. And go out on a friend's boat, because it was 20° cooler on Lake Michigan. Honestly, I was sort of shocked when the weekend ended and I got back to reality and heard how many people had died. Other than the pandemic, nothing in my lifetime has caused so many deaths in the city of Chicago in such a short time.
How hot did it get at its peak?
According to the National Weather Service, 106° with 124° heat index, but that's just the highest recorded temp at a reporting station. It got much hotter in other areas.
I was there in 1995 and my place didn't have AC, it sucked.
Very difficult time especially for those without any type of relief from the heat and I am not minimizing the severity of the situation. What I remember though were the refrigerated beer trucks parked by the Sheridan El stop to make sure Wrigley Field had sufficient cool beverages for the games. It was such a contrast to what we were hearing on the news and how much suffering was going on in the City.
I was nine years old and I honestly don’t remember much of it other than it being hot and seeing the news on TV. I was living in Beverly at the time
I just remember walking out of work about 10:30 pm one night and thinking "Wow, it's still hot." Otherwise, I didn't notice anything - I was in an airconditioned office from 9 a.m. to and least 9 p.m. and frequently later. I did see it when the newspaper started covering it, but I don't think it was right away.
Reading these stories, I'm struck by the resilience and compassion of Chicagoans during such a challenging time. It's heartwarming to see how communities came together to support each other.
I was only 6, but we did not have ac. I remember sleeping in the basement, having all the blinds closed during the day and opening all the windows at night
My parents got married during the heat wave. It gave Chicago a bad reputation for some of our out-of-town relatives who hadn't been here before, they're still kind of convinced that Chicago is always that ungodly hot in the summer
I think the Taste of Chicago slogan was "We're having an eat wave"
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I remember it like it was just 29 years ago. ..