some heat-related conditions can start with a headache, confusion, loss of consciousness and lead to death, she said.
andrew gage, a staff lawyer with west coast environmental law, said it’s long been known that climate change is driving extreme weather conditions like heat waves, but it’s time for the government to systematically look at how people’s health is being affected.
he called on the province to start educating citizens on ways to cope with extreme temperatures, especially older people who made up the majority of those who died during the heat wave and lived in the areas covered by vancouver coastal and fraser health regions.
andreanne doyon, an assistant professor at the school of resource and environmental management at simon fraser university, said municipal governments could take steps like planting more trees to cool down temperatures around buildings, many of which have large windows and no air conditioning.
satellite imaging after a heat wave in b.c. in 2017 showed lower-income neighbourhoods in vancouver, including the downtown eastside, had fewer trees compared with other parts of the city, she said.
“the problem, though, that the city and other regions are facing is that maintaining the existing tree population is not as easy as it sounds,” she said. “a lot of the tree species that we have are not meant to withstand this kind of heat.”