As Tucson gears up for another summer of brutal heat, Mayor Regina Romero said the city aims to open two additional cooling centers and increase its distribution of cooling kits to help Tucson’s most vulnerable residents.
“We are feeling the full force of climate change and extreme heat has become a year-round challenge,” Romero said during Monday’s news conference, as long-awaited rain clouds gathered overhead. “This is no longer a summer problem.”
Monday, May 5 was the start of heat awareness week, a region-wide effort to highlight the dangers of extreme heat in Pima County.
Even as Monday dawned cloudy with a sprinkling of rain, Tucson is on track to see ever-more dangerously hot days. Last summer, Tucson had more than 110 days of temperatures over 100 degrees. By 2035, projections show Pima County could see an average of 160 days a year with temperatures over 90 degrees, Romero said.
Pima County’s heat deaths have surged at an unprecedented rate over the past two years, coinciding with the sharp rise in prolonged summer heat. That worrying trend brings the number of Pima County heat deaths to a similar rate as Maricopa County’s, despite the north county being hotter.
In 2024, Pima County recorded 146 heat-related deaths, compared with 176 deaths in 2023.
Ongoing heat awareness efforts
Tucson currently supports six cooling centers, and plans to expand to eight, Romero said Monday. Last year the city passed out 900 heat-relief kits —which include water, sunscreen and cooling towels — and plans to do more this year.
Romero touted last year’s heat relief efforts, saying they reduced heat deaths in 2024 despite record-breaking temperatures. Tucson passed a heat protection ordinance for city workers and contractors in June 2024 that requires employers to have a heat safety plan for outside workers.
The city has also:
- Expanded solar-powered cooling stations
- Advocated for the federal government to recognize extreme heat as a major disaster, which would unlock funding available for other types of natural disasters
- Invested in planting trees around Tucson, which cools the city by increasing the tree canopy and mitigating the urban heat island effect, when heat gets trapped and released in concrete.
Vulnerable groups face a cruel summer
Every year, unsheltered communities are among the most vulnerable to extreme heat.
In 2024, 71% of heat-related deaths occurred outside, compared to 72% in 2023, according to Pima County’s heat-death dashboard.
Mutual aid groups launched an effort this month called Agua Para el Pueblo, an effort to increase the number of publicly available water stations outside businesses and private residences. The effort includes a guide for residents to set up their own water station.
The mayor said she did not have immediate numbers on whether the city could provide some sort of shelter to most unhoused people, but said the reality was that being unsheltered was dangerous either from the elements or violence, and the focus should be getting people housed.
“Being unsheltered is unsafe, period,” she said. “The best solution for the unsheltered is finding them shelter.”
She noted the recent opening of an emergency shelter in the Amphi neighborhood as well as expanded supportive housing efforts for veterans through Old Pueblo Community Services as among the city-supported efforts to find housing.
Mobile home and RV residents in Pima County also die from heat at high rates. One tool to mitigate these deaths is weatherizing older homes so that they are less expensive to cool and get less hot during the summer.
In December 2024, the City of Tucson won a competitive $11.5 million federal grant to help rehabilitate and weatherize homes, but that grant appears frozen since the Trump administration took power, Romero said.
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