Neighborhood Social Processes , Physical Conditions , and Disaster - Related Mortality : The Case of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave

of vulnerability. Recent events in Europe suggest that this statement may be especially true of the lethal meteorological events known as heat waves. Estimates indicate that as many as 35,000 Europeans died as a result of the roughly two-week period of unusually high temperatures in August 2003, with evidence suggesting that the victims were largely elderly (Hémon and Jougla 2003). The United States experienced its own heat-related disaster during the mid-1990s. Affecting a swath of the upper Midwest, the July 1995 heat wave produced its most severe consequences in Chicago, where up to 739 residents died due to sustained high temperatures over a several-day period (Whitman et al. 1997). Although the heat wave deaths were ostensibly weather related, Eric Klinenberg’s (2002) “social autopsy” of the Chicago disaster suggests that the consequences of the heat wave cannot be considered exclusively “natural” and Neighborhood Social Processes, Physical Conditions, and Disaster-Related Mortality: The Case of the 1995 Chicago Heat Wave