HEAT WAVE IN NEW YORK

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 544, 26 June 1909, Page 5

HEAT WAVE IN NEW YORK

'MANY DEATHS. , Now Ywh, June 24. Great hoat is being experienced in New York. Tho teraporaturo 'roached 90 degrees iu the shade, and many deaths aro being recorded. Twenty thousand poor aro sleeping on Coney Island'beach. ~ WHAT THE HEAT WAVE MEANS. The abeve oablo message convoys little idea of i the intonso discomfort, and, in tenement areas, tho intonso suffering caused by a summer, heat' wave In Kow York. When tho theimomotcr rogistore. from'ninety to a hundred degrees in tho shade it is safe to assumo that a correspondingly high percentage of humidity obtains, in which case,the atmosphere becomes so charged with vapour that it operates in the same.fsshion as a Turkish bath, and profuso per'spiratioii results. iN'ight time brings no reliof; the sweltering, oppressive heat continues, throughout the twentj-four hours, and for a week or'ten days at a time, until,dissipated by an electric storm. It is estimated that the mortality affecting chiefly the children of the East Side, the tenement district, Teaches five hundrod a week during,tho continuanco of' a heat wa\o. But this heavy toll can bo charged to ignorance, dietary, errors, and oxcesses—evils which ovory effort is being made, both public and private, to mitigate. Sleeping in the open air, now that .the war against mqsquitos in the adjacont Now I Jersey snemps.has been so largely succtssful, has becimo a very oommon practice. .Roofs, fire-escapee, the oidowalks, and public narks, resomblo huge dormitories, tho municipal authorities wisely suspending the by-laws wliich otherwise woald prohibit the privilege.. Horses, particularly, suffer from the intenso heat, and, in spite or thf adoption of sun-bonnets and frequont resting-places, where awnings are stretohod across the street and the hoso is played en animals showing signs of oxhaustion, it frequently happens that large companion employing horses will logo'.as many ■as ninety per cent, in tho course of tho summer months. Coney Island is the popular summer report facing the Atlantic, and 20 miles from the city; it is visited on a Sunday by as'many as 500,000 people, i