Cities have long made plans for extreme heat. Are they enough in a warming world?

Natural disasters can be dramatic — barreling hurricanes, building-toppling tornadoes — but heat is more deadly.

Chicago learned that the hard way in 1995.

That July, a weeklong heat wave that hit 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 degrees Celsius) killed more than 700 people. Most of the deaths occurred in poor and majority Black neighborhoods, where many elderly or isolated people suffered without proper ventilation or air conditioning. Power outages from an overwhelmed grid made it all worse.