1948 – Heat, excessive, 1948 ICD code 191; includes Aug/Sep heatwave, esp. NYC & Philly–392

Compiled by Wayne Blanchard Oct 2, 2023 for upload to: http://www.usdeadlyevents.com/

 –345  Public Health Service. Vital Statistics…[US] 1948, Part I…Mortality Data…, p. 166.^[1]

–147  (National One-Week Total).  Time. “Heat Wave.” September 6, 1948.

—  33  New York City.  History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, August 26, 1948.

 Narrative Information

 Time: “On this day in 1948, the temperature hits 108 degrees Fahrenheit in New York City during a week-long heat wave that kills at least 33 people.

“The intense heat hit the entire northeastern United States, but it was New York City and Philadelphia that suffered the most. In New York, thousands flocked to the beaches and a good portion stayed there at night, not wanting to return to their oppressively hot homes….

“Babies Hospital in Manhattan reported that seven children came in on a single day showing severe dehydration and fever. This led to a key discovery by doctors that children under two years of age with prior cerebral defects were particularly susceptible to high temperature. This information now sometimes enables the diagnosis of subtle cerebral defects in children who were not known to have the condition.” (History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, August 26, 1948)

 “An enormous mass of tropical air drifted up the Mississippi Valley—like a soldering iron being run slowly up a dowager’s spine. While chickens fell dead and pavements shimmered like cookstoves, the hot air spread east and west. Soon it was hot from the Rockies to the Atlantic coast. And it stayed hot…

“Records were broken. Thermometers recorded 107° in Dallas, 98° in Chicago, 100° in Kansas City, 98° in Detroit, 103° in Cleveland, 101.2° in Philadelphia, 100.4° in Boston and 96° in Hell, Mich.  In New York, Weather Bureau employees, who work without benefit of air conditioning, noted a temperature of 100.8°….

“In the big cities, as asphalt pavements softened to the consistency of taffy, hundreds of factories and offices began letting the help off early. When they didn’t, the help just stayed away. There were 20,000 absentees in Detroit automobile plants on the day after the heat wave began. Attendance at big-league baseball games dwindled…..

“The heat wave set off all kinds of trouble. In New Haven, Conn, and Milton, Mass., firemen had to turn up and cool off drawbridges which had expanded in the heat…. In Lakeview, Mich., a 16-year-old boy fainted while cutting wood, toppled into a buzz saw, and was killed. By week’s end 147 people had died, mostly from heat prostration. New York police, ordered to help keep the city’s water consumption down to 1,300,000 gallons a day, were driven wild by wrench-waving gangs who turned on hundreds of hydrants.

“In Baltimore, the air-conditioned Century Theater invited the public to come in after the last show and spend the night cooling off in upholstered seats…. The Bluefield, W.Va. Chamber of Commerce, which likes to brag about its town’s cool summer weather, did its best to compensate for the 92° weather by serving free lemonade to all.

“Efforts to escape the weather were spectacular. Some sought refuge in bars. Highways were jammed by automobiles heading for beaches or mountains. But to perspiring millions there was only one good thing that could be said about the heat wave—it couldn’t last forever.”  (Time. “Heat Wave.” September 6, 1948.)

 Sources

History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, August 26, 1948. “NYC and Philly Sizzle in Heat Wave.”  Accessed 12/09/2008 at:  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history.do?action=tdihArticleCategory&displayDate=08/26&categoryId=disaster

 Public Health Service, Federal Security Agency. Vital Statistics of the United States 1948. Part I, Natality and Mortality Data for the United States Tabulated by Place of Occurrence... Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1950. Accessed 10-2-2023 at: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/vsus/VSUS_1948_1.pdf

 Time Magazine. “Heat Wave.” September 6, 1948.  Accessed at:  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,779935,00.html

 [1] In 1948 the World Health Organization (WHO) took over the International Classification of Disease (ICD) system. Thus the new ICD system was labeled ICD-1. National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information. Accessed at: PMC PubMed Central.