Counting the dead

I saw a piece on the Weather Channel this weekend about heat wave related deaths. What was interesting about it, besides the fact that some people die with fans in their apartments that aren’t being used, is that different cities count their dead differently.

In Philadelphia, the dead from that heat wave were numbered in the range of 150-200 people in a matter of a week. In that same time, New York had similar temperatures and only reported four people dead.

This got me thinking: Does New York really have that much more resources than Philadelphia to keep people cool during a heat wave?

The answer: Perhaps, but largely it comes down to New York coroners and medical examiners just having a different way of tabulating these deaths. The Philadelphia count included anyone who died of a heat stroke, a heart attack related to the heat, or any other heat related illness. New York apparently took the temperature of the bodies at the time that they were found and used that to determine who died as a result of the heat wave.

This is problematic because if a coronor did not get to a body in a timely fashion, perhaps that body temperature began to drop. And largely this is problematic because funding wise cities who don’t accurately cite the severity of the problems within that city won’t be helped as much as they could be.

~ by anz203 on December 3, 2007.