Surviving Phoenix's extreme heat: Laying asphalt in triple digit temps

Heat envelops our lives in Arizona's Sonoran Desert. How does it define us?

One way is through the infrastructure of people and organizations, including public resources provided by cities and other governments, that has developed to help people who cannot protect themselves from scorching outdoor temperatures.

The Heat Relief Network , a regional partnership of governments, community groups, churches, businesses and nonprofits, is coordinated by the Maricopa Association of Governments to make it easier for people needing shelter from the sun or access to water to find help. Transportation to a heat relief center is as easy as calling 2-1-1.

These services can be lifesaving. Curtis Bridgewater, who has relied this summer on a Salvation Army site in Chander for protection from the heat, put it this way: “The sun, it gives life, but it will also take it."

This week, Arizona Republic reporters and photographers are spreading out across the hottest major metro area in the U.S. to explore how desert dwellers suffer from the heat, adapt and survive. Here's what we found on Thursday, July 25, 2024.

Monday's report: 'It's hotter than it's ever been'

Tuesday's report: 'My life revolves around the summer'

Wednesday's report: 'The sun, it gives life, but it will also take it'

What is it like to lay asphalt in Phoenix's summer heat?

Black asphalt coming out of a truck measured 315 degrees Thursday morning as a crew from Weems Asphalt worked to replace a section of the parking lot at Desert Sky Mall in west Phoenix.

About 700 tons of the blazing hot mixture would be applied by a nine-member crew.

Four workers raked and swept the hot mixture immediately as it was poured. The ambient temperature directly behind the paving machine, driven by Martin Estrello, reached about 200 degrees in the moments after the asphalt was poured.

Even after the asphalt had been laid for over an hour, the material's surface temperature was still 181 degrees.

Working in heat while dealing with the extreme temperatures of asphalt carries risk, and Weems Asphalt has taken a series of precautions to prevent an emergency, said Director of Operations Matt Doud.

Doud said a typical day in the summer starts at about 5 a.m. Throughout the year, the crew's work day generally starts when the sun comes up, so in winter, the team begins work later in the day.

The whole crew is expected to take a 15-minute break for water at least every hour and as needed if they start to feel too hot or thirsty.

If a person starts to feel unwell, that ends the workday for them, and they can cool off or go home to feel better. So far this year, Doud said, the company has not had any cases of needing to send an employee home for heat-related illness.

Once the outside temperature reaches about 110 or higher, Doud said, they try to wind down operations to prevent employees from being exposed to even more extreme temperatures. The crew Thursday had a couple of extra men on-site, so workers could substitute in as people took breaks.

Doud said the asphalt project at Desert Sky Mall took about three days. Two days were spent removing the existing pavement, and one day was spent laying the new asphalt. Each day, employees set up a pop-up canopy for shade during breaks and hauled in several cases of water and hydration drink powder mixes to replenish electrolytes, but the work itself was mostly in direct sunlight.

Employees meet weekly in the summer, starting in about April, to talk about heat safety and precautions, Doud said.

“We do everything we can do to keep it in their minds,” he said of heat safety awareness. “It can be monotonous, but if they aren’t thinking about it, that can get dangerous.”

— Corina Vanek

4 p.m., outside the Tempe Public Library: 108 degrees

Late Thursday afternoon, it was 108 degrees outside of the Tempe Public Library as Caridad Montes waited for the bus to take her and her 4-year-old daughter Hannaniah home to Mesa.

For Montes, 31, the punishing heat that bakes the Valley for months every summer is not new — she grew up here. But having a young child posed a new challenge: finding things to do, especially for free.

“I try to stay inside, and then if it gets too boring — because she’s a single child — to bring her somewhere where there’s AC,” Montes said.

Montes takes her window shopping, to museums and to Peter Piper Pizza. But Hannaniah most loves to be outside, so they go to splash pads at Riverview and Pioneer parks, and Montes tries to let her ride on her scooter for at least 20 minutes during the day, despite the heat.

On Thursday, they spent a couple of hours at the library, reading stories, coloring and eating snacks. There are programs for children and teens nearly every day at the library, including story time with librarians, video gaming for teens and arts programs, according to Library Director Jessica Jupitus.

Other families, too, spent Thursday afternoon in the children’s section of the library as temperatures remained high.

Vanessa Corrigan watched her children, ages 5 and 2, as they played games and painted virtually on touch-screen computers. To escape the heat throughout the summer, she said, she also takes them to the Tempe History Museum, grocery stores, shopping malls and trampoline parks.

Still, Corrigan said, it can be challenging to find things to do with her children throughout the summer.

— Madeleine Parrish

Yes, dead batteries, but little rust. The tradeoffs for cars in Arizona

As the owner of Whitey’s Auto Repair in Scottsdale, Mark Kennedy says he does everything he can think of to keep his workers in the car bays cool during the summer.

“We’ve got extra fans there and coolers,” he said. “We completely gutted the coolers last year and rebuilt them all of the way, trying to get every ounce of efficiency we could out of them.”

He said the humidity is the main problem. Shortly after 4 p.m., it was 136 degrees on the asphalt of the repair shop and 44% humidity.

“I worked out here in those same bays for 30 years, so basically when it gets humid, we got those massive commercial evap coolers up there, but they don’t keep up with the humidity,” Kennedy said. “They’re basically just blowing air then.”

Some of the bays have personal refrigerators where his employees keep water and Gatorade to stay hydrated.

“Unfortunately, we live in Arizona,” he laughed.

On the business side, he said more customers come into his shop during the summer for car battery replacements, cooling system repairs, and fixes for anything rubber on a vehicle, like tires or windshield wipers.

“But a lot of stuff fairs better,” he said. “We don’t deal with rust. There’s just so many other things we don’t have to deal with. It’s a tradeoff.”

— Sabine Martin

3:55 p.m., Mesa: 108 degrees

It was 108 degrees just before 4 p.m., and Joaquin Watson was loading items into his truck under the hot sun outside the Mesa Riverview Walmart, off Loop 202 at Dobson Road.

Watson said he was in town to visit his daughter and was not used to the heat.

“I’m originally from New Mexico,” he said. “It’s like 89 over there.”

Watson said he had not spent much time outside during the day.

“Just trying to stay inside, drink a lot of water,” he said.

The need for a few items from the store forced him out into the heat. Clouds lessened the impact of the sun’s rays, but the black asphalt radiated warmth.

The air-conditioned store offered shoppers a welcome break from the outdoors. The parking lot was busy as shoppers stocked up on the warm afternoon.

— Jack Armstrong

1:20 p.m., Phoenix: 108 degrees

On Thursday afternoon, Petra Bravo Salgado, 69, recalled the night before in her apartment. It was windy and hot — not so pleasant.

Bravo, who hails from Guerrero, Mexico, lives in the Casa de Primavera Senior Apartments in west Phoenix, which Chicanos Por La Causa manages. As she recalled the night, she sat on a couch in the complex's front office.

It was 9 p.m. when Bravo, sitting on her couch watching TV and working on her current embroidery project — one of her favorite hobbies — saw lightning illuminating the sky through her sliding window, followed by loud thunder and rain. Suddenly, her apartment went pitch black. The power came back about 3 minutes later, but it went out once again and did not come back until 4 a.m.

“I was feeling very fatigued,” Bravo said in Spanish. “I opened my sliding window. All of it." But not even that could help her escape the heat, she said. "I would sleep for short spans of minutes but was more awake than asleep.”

Management acted quickly at dawn, sending staff to clear the roads of fallen trees and buying electric fans for the residents as soon as stores opened to regulate the temperature at the apartment complex. Water was also provided to residents.

Bravo had a tough night. She said she's slowly recovering from the rest she missed.

During these summer months in the Valley, when triple-digit temperatures are an everyday occurrence, Bravo puts a smart action into practice: she runs her errands at the crack of dawn. She rarely leaves the complex, but when she does, she’ll be outside the door by 5 a.m.

“I normally wake up at 4:30 a.m.,” Bravo said. “The other day, I left my place by 5 a.m., took the first bus of the day, got off on 75th Ave and McDowell and walked to Walmart. By 7 a.m., I was already back.”

— Paula Soria

1 p.m., near Camelback Road and 35th Avenue in Phoenix: 108 degrees

Daniel Cruz, 41, sat in the 108-degree heat by his parked car, which is also his home, near the intersection of Camelback Road and 35th Avenue, eating lunch and smoking a cigarette.

At 1 p.m., the car was 157 degrees inside, loaded with most of his belongings.

During the day, he drives to a cooling center or library and tries to resist the heat. At night, he sleeps in his car with the windows down.

He avoids using the AC when gas prices go up, but sometimes he can't avoid it, he said.

“I’ve got a little gig, so I’m not so nervous about running it right now,” he said.

— Miguel Torres

12:30 p.m., near the Mesa Arts Center: 121-degree ground temperature

A wide-brim straw hat provided shade for April Slater a little past 12:30 p.m. at the Mesa Urban Garden. Beads of perspiration collected on her smiling face, which was framed by her hijab.

The surface temperatures for the garden on East First Avenue and South Hibbert near downtown Mesa reached 121 degrees, with humidity at 30%. The 55-year-old Slater remained cheerful between watering her small vegetable plot and picking figs from a tree in the decades-old garden.

“I’m comfortable,” Slater said of her clothes, which covered almost the entirety of her body. “My dress is flowy.”

— Jose Gonzalez

12:30 p.m., downtown Mesa: 102 degrees

As temperatures soared past 100 degrees around midday in downtown Mesa, Thaddeus Fort and Skylar Perovich chatted at the shaded bus stop on the southeast corner of Alma School Road and Main Street.

Fort, 66, and Perovich, 17, had met each other only minutes earlier.

Fort, who is unhoused, was seeking some relief from the sun in the shade. Shirtless and clutching a water bottle, he had been standing at the bus stop for a couple of hours. Sweat streamed down his face.

The temperature at the bus stop reached 102 degrees, even in the shade. The pavement was searing at 159 degrees.

Even after dark, Fort said, it's hard to find relief from the heat.

"It's still pretty hot even at night," he said. "I'll just toss and turn in the pavement. ... Arizona just sucks. Mainly in the summer."

Perovich was waiting for the bus to take him home to Gilbert after attending a class at the East Valley Institute of Technology. He mostly relies on public transit and his skateboard to get around.

A few weeks back, Perovich said he experienced heat exhaustion symptoms while skating from his home to his girlfriend's place around noon. The trip usually takes him half an hour on his skateboard, he said.

"Not even halfway there, I started feeling dizzy, nauseous, dry throat and feeling like I was going to faint, but I pushed myself even further. I almost passed out," he said.

Perovich attends EVIT's automotive program and hopes to find a job and begin saving for a car soon. He plans to move to Colorado when he graduates, partly to escape the heat and "experience actual seasons," he said.

— Laura Daniella Sepúlveda

11 a.m., Superior: 98 degrees

Joseph Currie, habitat planning program manager with Arizona Game and Fish, pulled out the weeds surrounding a water catchment where a variety of wild animals come to drink.

"From bees and bats to elk and bald eagles, bighorn sheep, mountain lions, coyotes, foxes, bobcats, chipmunks, snakes — everything comes to drink from these waters,” said Currie.

Urban growth, road construction and extensive water extraction from wells have drastically limited the water sources available to wildlife, jeopardizing their survival, particularly during the scorching and dry summer months, he said.

Game and Fish oversees and maintains 3,000 water catchments scattered across the state, ensuring animals can access water.

Even with the ground temperature soaring to 139 degrees, Game and Fish's system keeps the water on the surface at a cooler 98 degrees.

"Most water is stored underneath the aprons or underground, so it stays cooler,” said Currie. “Although the water in the trough can warm up and support algae growth, the animals don't care, they'll drink it.”

While bees, wasps and a dragonfly floated on the surface, Currie said, "You can consider this a natural pond."

— Trilce Estrada Olvera

10:30 a.m., Gilbert: 100 degrees

Mark Hamblin, who is blind, finished putting labels on bags of food at the Midwest Food Bank in Gilbert about 10 a.m. Thursday, an hour ahead of schedule.

But his ride home to Phoenix, 20 miles away, wasn’t due to arrive until 11:25 a.m., so Hamblin had time to kill. The temperature was already 100 degrees outside, but the 36% humidity made it feel even hotter, more like 105.

Hamblin, 68, waited in the air-conditioned lobby, checking his voice-activated phone every so often to make sure he knew when it was time to go outside.

The heat can be especially tough for people with disabilities.

Earlier this summer, Hamblin, who uses a white cane to get around, missed a curb during his morning walk near his home in north central Phoenix. He fell on the hot asphalt but rolled to avoid getting burned.

And a year ago in July, he got lost walking home from lunch at Arriba Grill on Camelback Road. It was a cloudy day, so Hamblin couldn’t use the sun to navigate which direction he was headed. He ended up wandering around in the 100-degree heat for an hour and a half, trying to get home. He wore a hat. He drank the two bottles of water he carried in his backpack. But by the time someone summoned a police officer to help him, he was already feeling dizzy and disoriented.

“I thought I had heat stroke,” Hamblin said, sitting on a chair inside the lobby at Midwest Food Bank.

Hamblin gradually lost his vision due to a degenerative eye disease and stopped driving in 1988. He has depended on Valley Metro ride programs to get around ever since. In the hot weather, he tries to wait indoors until his ride arrives, but that is not always possible. He does his grocery shopping on Saturday mornings. Sometimes, he waits outside in the heat for half an hour or longer until his ride home shows up.

Hamblin retired from the Arizona Department of Revenue before the COVID-19 pandemic. To keep busy, he volunteers at the food bank two times a week.

At 11:20 a.m., Hamblin got up and headed outside. He used his white cane to navigate through the lobby and out the front door. By then, the temperature had climbed to 104 degrees. With the 35% humidity, it felt like 108. A temperature reading of the pavement in the sun showed it was 144 degrees.

Hamblin waited a few minutes, then checked his phone. A text message said his ride was now coming at 11:44 a.m. To get out of the heat, Hamblin made his way back inside the air-conditioned lobby.

Hamblin went back outside at 11:43 a.m. At 11:46 a.m., a Black Toyota Highlander sent by regional ADA Paratransit pulled up to the curb. The driver helped Hamblin get in the back seat and then drove off.

— Daniel Gonzalez

10:20 a.m., the Burnidge Soup Kitchen in Phoenix: 98 degrees

Salvador Ramirez Vega has tried many different methods to stay cool during the hottest summer days in Phoenix.

But on Thursday, he tried something new. The 43-year-old was the latest to receive IV hydration treatments from Circle the City’s street medicine team, which provides health care to people without housing. The team was at the Burnidge Soup Kitchen on Osborn Road, just west of Grand Avenue in Phoenix.

This is the first summer the team has provided this unique care, which gets a liter of liquid flowing into the body quickly using fluids with electrolytes or a saline solution. Associate Medical Director Perla Pueblo said she’s relieved the team can offer an array of options for deadly temperatures.

Ramirez Vega has been homeless for three years, on and off. He sleeps outside and has been hospitalized before because of heat illness, he said.

“The sun beats you up,” Ramirez Vega said. “It drains you.”

Sitting in the shade of a large tarp and with a cold towel around his neck, he waited for the treatment to bring some relief.

“Does it feel cold?” Pueblo asked.

The solution is 72 degrees, which can help sooth people coming to the mobile clinic with symptoms of heat illness.

The treatment helps keep the body hydrated after losing electrolytes and water through constant sweating, but it’s only temporary. Pueblo said she recommends her patients drink three to five liters of water a day.

Patients stop by throughout the morning, beginning after 5 a.m. when the clinic first opens up. They leave with frozen water bottles and plenty of electrolyte drink mix, with a reminder to be back next week.

— Helen Rummel

10 a.m., Interstate 101 near Cave Creek Road: 97 degrees

Leonard Morris prayed as he revved his F-250 Super Duty up an Interstate 10 on-ramp Thursday morning.

“Lord my heavenly father, please bless me with traveling mercy,” he said. “For heavenly angels wrap about me, to guard me, protect me, those around me, and those who are driving as well, that they may keep their eyes on the road, that we are respectful of each other as we switch lanes, and as we go from point A to point B, that no one gets hurt, no one gets into any accidents, and that we are kept from any danger. In Jesus’ name, I pray, amen.”

Protected by faith and a ballistic vest, the 36-year-old saves stranded drivers on the Phoenix metro beltway. He’s a modern-day Good Samaritan, a roadside motorist assistant for the Arizona Department of Public Safety, tasked with patrolling state highways and taking calls when cars break down.

He’s been on the job for five years, and he sees an uptick when temperatures climb, often because people forget to check their car fluids and fail to do routine maintenance.

His vest can feel like a sauna suit this time of year, so he blasts his truck’s AC and keeps a gallon of cool water ready.

On Thursday, he roamed the roads, checking on young guys changing a tire and assessing the oil on a broken-down panel van.

On the right shoulder of Interstate 101 near Cave Creek Road, he ventured into the roar of passing traffic to address an abandoned Ford Five Hundred sedan. The car seemed to be panting with its windows down — it was overcast, but the thermometer had already climbed to 97 by 10 a.m. The car’s maroon paint registered 108.

An orange police sticker on the rear window told Morris the car had been there for about a day, well over its two-hour grace period.

Morris is merciful. He’s sensitive that this may become expensive for the owner, so he tries not to resort to a tow. But he has to clear the danger.

In the shade of his truck cab, he filled out a report to have a contracted towing company remove the road hazard. In seven minutes, the car was gone.

This was a routine call, with no frantic driver present. Sometimes, he responds to crashes that are much more stressful, and tempers can flare.

His truck bears a decal saying “courteous vigilance,” and Morris tries to embody the motto. In addition to his water, vest and a truckload of road equipment, he might carry a bag of silicone bracelets like the pair he wears, bearing a message to soothe weary travelers: “Jesus loves you.”

— Andrew Ford

10 a.m., 16th Street north of Osborn Road in Phoenix: 103 degrees

Kevin Fawthorp spent part of his morning Thursday with his body halfway in the hood of a car, hoisting a 50-pound engine into a truck.

Sweat dripped from his forehead, into his eyes and off of his chin. Fawthorp is a technician at Martin's Auto Repair, where it was 98 degrees inside the garage at 10 a.m. Fans and swamp coolers blew overhead, making an honest, if not particularly impressive, attempt to make a dent in the heat. Outside, the air measured 103.

"Swamp coolers, when it gets this humid, don't work, and you can't exactly have AC out here — it's not cost-effective," he said. "The heat's really bad."

To cope with working long hours beneath hoods and undercarriages, Fawthorp said he goes to the gym every morning at 4 a.m. to maintain his back strength. He also carries a one-gallon insulated water bottle he refills at least three times a day to stay hydrated.

In an Arizona summer, cars are often hot to the touch and trap heat inside. Around 10:30 a.m., a truck outside the shop measured 110 degrees, and the inside of a car Sebastian Estrada was fixing measured 115.

Estrada learned car repair from his dad. When he was a kid, the two of them worked outside on cars with no air conditioning at all, so he isn't sweating it, he said — mentally, at least.

— Christina Avery

9:30 a.m., Tucscon: 97 degrees

It was 97 degrees at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, and 80-year-old Stan Pardee had already been working outside for two hours.

Despite the sweat accumulating on his gray T-shirt, 97 degrees was not hot for him, he said. The day’s forecast expected highs of around 102 by mid-afternoon.

“It’s not hot yet,” he said.

Twice per week, for four hours each time, Pardee volunteers at his church on Tucson’s east side, cleaning plant debris, pruning and raking. He does this backbreaking work because it’s needed, he said.

“It's the first thing people see when they come in,” he said. “I don't do the preaching, but they won't listen to that if they see a mess and turn around and leave."

He called it an invisible but necessary job. While people might not notice the work done to clean the church’s grounds, he said, they will notice if they look overgrown and shabby.

A retired engineer with the Raytheon Company and Tucson resident for 40 years, the heat doesn’t seem to bother him as he raked just-cut branches. To keep cool, he wore a wide-brimmed hat and started work half an hour earlier to finish before the day started to really heat up.

He also dislikes air conditioners, he said.

“I walk into the office, and it almost kills you,” he said.

Pardee handles the summer heat by going slowly as he tends to the landscape and picks up trash on the 10 acres in front of El Camino Baptist Church.

While the heat does not impact his health, it does tire him out.

“I'm tired in the afternoon; time to rest,” he said.

— Sarah Lapidus

9 a.m., Buffalo Park in Flagstaff: 78 degrees

Many metro Phoenix residents head to Flagstaff in the summer when temperatures soar. But the northern Arizona city is heating up too.

Karin DeMarse and Julia Triebes had just finished a hike at Buffalo Park and were staying in the shade.

“It’s gotten a lot hotter in the past five years,” said Triebes, who moved to Flagstaff from Atlanta 20 years ago. “We are closer to the sun up here, and sometimes people visit and don’t realize that.”

She has air conditioning in her house, but many people still don’t.

DeMarse said more people hang out at cool public places like the library during the summer.

“It used to be you couldn’t wear shorts at night in the summer because it was too cool, but not now,” she said.

She said her family stays cool by doing everything before 10 a.m. and wetting a bandana when out and about.

Both said the wildfires have made the heat worse, partly because people have to shut their windows to keep out the smoke and can’t let in cooler air in the morning and at night.

— Catherine Reagor and Sean Holstege

8:30 a.m., Vantage Data Center campus in Goodyear: 96 degrees

It was 96 degrees at 8:30 a.m. at the construction site of the $1.5 billion Vantage Data Center campus in Goodyear.

General contractor McCarthy Building Companies has been working for the past two and a half years to build out the campus, and Thursday marked the milestone where the walls could be “tilted up” on some of the buildings, the beginnings of the vertical building shell.

About 350 construction workers across trades were working at the site Thursday, though up to about 600 construction workers can be working on the site at once.

The large site includes several cooling stations, trailers and other temporary structures with air conditioning, seating and refrigerators with water for construction workers to use when taking a break from the heat.

Daniel Patella and Pedro Martinez, both journeymen carpenters at McCarthy, arrived for work at 4 a.m. and 3 a.m., respectively, but some other construction workers had been at it since as early as 2 a.m.

Jeff Jajou, safety manager at McCarthy, said that by about 1 p.m., most work on the site wraps up, keeping workers out of the hottest parts of the day.

To help combat the heat and boost morale, the site has an ice cream truck come each Thursday to provide free ice cream, and people from McCarthy, called the “heat busters,” pass out popsicles to workers daily and check up on them, making sure they are taking adequate breaks and getting enough water.

Martinez said using a cooling towel and a cooling insert in his hard hat that can be doused with water can help make working outdoors more comfortable, even while using necessary safety equipment. Long-sleeved shirts made out of light fabric that can be splashed with water can also provide sun protection and cooling.

— Corina Vanek

Equine therapy program moves horses north in summer

Hunkapi, a nonprofit equine therapy farm based out of Scottsdale , is asking the community for donations to support their horses during the summer's extreme heat.

Equine therapy uses horses to help people with mental or physical challenges. Hunkapi offers courses for first responders, people in addiction recovery, people with disabilities and children in group homes.

The Hunkapi horses are currently at the group's Flagstaff location to escape the sweltering heat of the Valley. However, the organization says that even up north, the summer temperatures still take a heavy toll on the animals, especially the older horses.

Scottsdale's high today is 112, with an overnight low of 86. Flagstaff's high today is 87, with an overnight low of 55.

The program is seeking help to pay for 160 bales of hay to sustain the herd at its northern location until the end of the summer. Each bale costs $25.

— Marcus Reichley

Huge share of indoor heat deaths occur when AC is not working

Every year since 2016, more than 70 percent of the heat-related deaths that occurred indoors in Maricopa County were in places where air conditioning was not functioning, according to county records.

Maricopa County households facing financial hardship can apply for AC repair assistance through the county's Emergency Home Repair Program .

— Republic staff

Phoenix apartment complex faces repair deadline for AC units

The Valley’s extreme heat has been especially harsh for residents of Buenas on 32nd apartment complex , which caught the ire of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday for failing to address air conditioning problems despite triple-digit temps.

Mayes sent a demand letter to Buenas Communities LLC on Tuesday, saying the company needed to take immediate action to address the ineffective AC at the complex, located at 32nd Avenue and Indian School Road.

The letter instructed Buenas Communities to fix any affected air conditioning unit by Friday at 5 p.m. and provide written confirmation of the repair by July 29 at 5 p.m., a news release stated.

On Wednesday, most of the apartment units had AC units mounted in windows with cardboard or plywood filling in part of the window frame.

The Buenas Communities corporate office did not respond to phone and email messages from The Republic.

Earlier this month, AZFamily reported that Buenas Communities provided a statement saying the company was working with a vendor to expedite the purchase of a new chiller system. However, there was a 20-week wait time, the statement said.

"Tenants do have portable A/C’s in each of their living areas to facilitate a comfortable living environment in the meantime," Buenas Communities told AZ Family. "Tenants are also well aware that if any issues arise they can reach us at any given time and we will be sure to tend to their needs."

Doug Brynjulson, who had lived at the complex for about a month, said his window unit only blew lukewarm air inside the apartment and that his ceiling fan had begun to fail.

Brynjulson said he’s complained to the apartment management repeatedly about the issues. Their responses have been that they’re understaffed or working on the issue, he said.

Since 2021, the complex has had eight cooling-related violation cases, not including the current case, according to Teleia Galaviz, a spokesperson for Phoenix's Neighborhood Services Department.

Three cases were opened in 2021, four in 2022 and one in 2023.

“It’s pretty much like trying to talk to the wall and say, ‘Hey, change color.’” Brynjulson said. “It’s not going to do that until you paint over it and change the color yourself.”

— Perry Vandell and L.M. Boyd

Energy suppliers plan far into future as consumer demand grows

Planning for meeting energy needs can involve looking decades into the future, one day ahead, and responding in real time, all at once, said Angie Bond-Simpson, senior director of resource management for SRP. The utility does planning for 30 years into the future, as well as daily estimates on what use is expected for the next day.

“The variation in how customers use power usually correlates to temperature,” she said, adding that as temperatures increase, it is natural that customers will use more energy to cool their homes and businesses.

At SRP’s Agua Fria Generating Station in Glendale, a variety of different power generators and energy storage systems are in use to ensure a diversity of supply and a resilient system, she said. The site has added on-site battery storage, which can supplement some energy sources that can be intermittent, like solar and wind.

Demand for energy continues to grow, according to data provided by APS. On July 15, 2022, APS customers broke the peak daily demand record, using 8,162 megawatts of power, and the utility is expecting to see the record broken again this year. The previous APS energy demand record was set in 2020, with 7,660 megawatts used.

— Corina Vanek

7 a.m., Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport: 94 degrees

Thursday's weather is forecast to be sunny and hot again, with a high near 113 and heat index values up to 114. The National Weather Service projects a 20% chance of showers and thunderstorms in the late afternoon and a 30% chance in the evening, with patchy blowing dust from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. and an overnight low around 89.

— Republic staff

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Surviving Phoenix's extreme heat: Laying asphalt in triple digit temps