‘Leave your home’ guidance by B.C. PHSA prompts response from disability, seniors advocates

Recent advice by the Provincial Health Services Authority is getting a lot of response from those within the B.C. disability community.

“Be prepared to leave your home during an extreme heat emergency. Consider staying with friends/family that have air conditioning or cooler spaces. Identify places you can visit to get cool. Plan ahead with the Extreme Heat Preparedness Guide,” the tweet posted Thursday reads.

Be prepared to leave your home during an extreme heat emergency. Consider staying with friends/family that have air conditioning or cooler spaces. Identify places you can visit to get cool. Plan ahead with the Extreme Heat Preparedness Guide. https://t.co/jIQfqWriCX @PreparedBC pic.twitter.com/Hb3UJw2sLI

— Provincial Health Services Authority (@PHSAofBC) June 16, 2022

Spencer van Vloten is the editor of BC Disability, a website which connects the community with information and support.

“We know from research as well that people with disabilities … face two to three times greater risk of dying due to extreme heat and in general, people who are living in poverty are particularly impacted by extreme heat. Now, the statement that the government made is basically advising people to do things that are a lot more difficult for people with disabilities, for seniors, people in poverty to do,” he said, adding, “they’re making recommendations for the people who are the least impacted by the heat.”

He says the heat dome just outlined an existing problem when it comes to inclusion, pointing out that the latest report released did not have a member of the disability community on the panel.

“The goal of BC Disability is simple: we want to help persons with disabilities and allies find what they are looking for!” the website reads. (bcdisability.com)

“People with disabilities disproportionately live in poverty, all through Canada, that makes them more likely to have to live in subsidized housing, housing that is smaller and has inadequate ventilation or air flow. And when central air conditioning costs thousands of dollars and portable air condition costs hundreds of dollars…it’s just not something they can afford,” he said.

He says the advice to “identify places you can visit to get cool” is also dismissive of those who face mobility challenges.

“Many places and … communities still aren’t fully accessible to people with disabilities … The other issue is that people with disabilities also tend to be more isolated than people without disabilities,” he said.

Seniors also facing barriers

The BC Coroners Service’s heat dome report found many of the 619 heat deaths last year were seniors and people with preexisting conditions who died during the series of record-breaking temperatures.

Individuals aged 70+ accounted for 69 per cent of deaths, and 96 per cent of heat-related injuries occurred in a residential setting.

BC Seniors’ Advocate Isobel Mackenzie was on the panel and contributed to the report, titled “Extreme Heat and Human Mortality: A Review of Heat-Related Deaths in B.C. in Summer 2021.”

She was among the almost two dozen experts who made recommendations and knows that many seniors were not able to simply leave their homes during the emergency.

However, she doesn’t disagree with the overall message, which she says is an important shift in the previous stance when it comes to heat.

During the 2021 heat wave, people were overwhelmingly told to stay inside, away from the sun. Some warnings urged people to cut down on exercise or to seek an air conditioned environment such as a community cooling centre or a mall. But the messaging was not reflective of the extent of the risk, especially for more vulnerable people.

“Limit the amount of time outdoors between 11:00 am and 4:00 pm when the heat and sun are most intense,” the City of Maple Ridge, just one of the municipalities hoping to prepare residents, wrote ahead of the heat wave.

The province said people should focus on keeping one part of their house cool, saying to “start by identifying a room that’s typically coolest and consider how you can modify the layout to support sleeping and day-to-day living for the duration of the heat event.”

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It also recommended people “keep cool” by staying “indoors in air-conditioned buildings or take a cool bath or shower.”

However, unlike in other high heat situations, the temperatures during the heat dome barely dipped overnight when the malls were closed. Despite some community centres being open and spray parks set up, they also weren’t open overnight.

“Stay inside when it’s hot outside….put cold compresses on your wrist, close the windows during the heat of the day, open them up at night. All of the kind of typical advice we give during a heat wave which is still appropriate during a heat wave was totally insufficient,” Mackenzie said.

Mackenzie says experts have learned that there is a difference.

“There’s a heat wave, [and then] there’s a heat emergency. That was part of what came out of the report and part of what the province has responded to. So the province has said we recognize now a heat emergency is different from a heat wave. And there’s a heat emergency we will use the emergency broadcast system,” she added.

Mackenzie admits that it’s not simply a matter of telling people to leave their home, but to help those who have barriers preventing them from doing so.

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She admits it’s a major issue and that the province and stakeholders are in talks on how to address it.

“The next part of that plan is going to be reaching out to the people who are not capable of leading on their own and have a plan for evacuating them. And it’s my understanding that those plans are underway,” Mackenzie said.

However, with the one year anniversary of the heat dome just over a week away, if the temperatures were to spike again in the near future, there are currently no public plans in place for where those most vulnerable people would go.

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Mackenzie says the intake assessment for Home and Community Care also does not currently include a heat hazard, which would look at whether the home is equipped to deal with extreme heat for seniors.

“[Does] the home have mechanical ventilation? Is it the kind of home that will become overheated? Is the person living there somebody who will have to be evacuated? We can do that going forward and that I think will be very helpful.”

Preparing for Summer 2022?

For van Vloten, he says without major changes, history could repeat itself. He says he has spoken with many people in his community who are incredibly worried.

“It’s disheartening to see people with disabilities again being ignored, and it’s an ongoing pain and I hope that more people don’t have to die this year to get the government to realize that,” he said.

The province says it will continue to speak with vulnerable groups in order to move forward together and address any gaps.

“I think the recommendations that we made are near-term recommendations that will help eliminate risk today. There are longer-term and medium-term risk mitigation measures that are going to make sure that we build societies and communities and build our homes in a way that sensible, as we go forward,” Dr. Jatinder Baidwan, chief medical health officer with the BC Coroners Service said.

“Are we where we need to be? No. Can we get better? Absolutely,” he said June 7.

CityNews has reached out to the PHSA for comment but did not receive a response in time for deadline.