Seventy-Two Hours Under the Heat Dome
A chronicle of a slow-motion climate disaster that became one of Oregon’s deadliest calamities.
Photographer: Will Matsuda
Publisher: The New Yorker
Format: Print, Digital
Date: 2021/10/11
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Ninety-six people perished in one of Oregon’s deadliest calamities. Photograph by Will Matsuda for The New YorkerVivek Shandas, a professor at Portland State University, took the highest measurement he’d seen in fifteen years of recording temperatures—a hundred and eighty degrees, on a stretch of asphalt. Photograph by Will Matsuda for The New YorkerLents, one of Portland’s poorest communities, experienced a record high of a hundred and twenty-four degrees. Photograph by Will Matsuda for The New YorkerShane Brown delivered groceries to his mother and chauffeured her to medical appointments. Photograph by Will Matsuda for The New YorkerPeople experiencing homelessness during the heat wave braved the elements unless they could make it to one of just three cooling shelters.
Photograph by Will Matsuda for The New YorkerAfter Shane Brown’s parents separated, his mother, Jollene, had raised him alone, moving around the West as she followed work in the telecom industry. Photograph by Will Matsuda for The New YorkerDuring three days in June, Portland saw the three highest temperatures in its recorded history. Photograph by Will Matsuda for The New Yorker