Story at a glance
- A historic heat wave is plaguing the Pacific Northwest.
- Two people from Washington state died of hyperthermia on Monday.
- Ten percent of emergency room visits on Monday were the result of heat-related illness.
A historic heat wave plaguing the Pacific Northwest has turned deadly.
Two people from Washington state, a 65-year-old woman from Seattle and a 68-year-old woman from Enumclaw, died of hyperthermia on Monday amid the deadly heat, according to the Seattle Times.
Hyperthermia occurs when the body’s temperature becomes dangerously high and overheats. Seattle’s temperature peaked at 108 degrees on Monday.
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Ten percent of emergency room visits on Monday were a result of heat-related illness, the Seattle Times reported, according to data from local public health departments.
“It was quite a large volume,” Jeremy Hess, an attending physician at Harborview Medical Center, told the Seattle Times. “They were all very, very sick patients. The system as a whole was strained.”
Several Pacific Northwest cities broke all-time heat records over the weekend and into Monday, when Portland hit a high of 116 degrees. Previously, the all-time high for Portland was 107, according to the National Weather Service.
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