Outdoor events like county fairs, travel and ongoing clean-up associated with severe storms; can all be impacted extreme heat conditions. Keep safety in mind and include heat risk mitigation and response in your preparedness plans. Here are a few resources to help you and your office share messaging on extreme heat and prepare for heat impacts.
FEMA’s Ready.gov Extreme Heat Resources: Did you know that extreme heat is responsible for the highest number of annual deaths among all weather hazards? Two to three days of over 90-degree temperatures with high humidity is considered extreme heat. FEMA’s Ready.gov Extreme Heat website shares information on risks, preparedness, safety, and heat-related illnesses. Go to https://www.ready.gov/heat or https://www.ready.gov/es/summer-ready to help everyone be #SummerReady. Extreme heat social media messaging and graphics in English and Spanish are also available for you to share in your communities (https://www.ready.gov/extreme-heat-safety-social-media-toolkit). Extreme heat graphics (https://www.ready.gov/collection/extreme-heat)
National Weather Service – Summer Safety: Social media resources, infographics, videos and more - https://www.weather.gov/wrn/summer-safety
Heat Safety Tool from OSHA: To help you gauge heat conditions and get safety information, you can download the OSHA-NIOSH Heat Safety Tool. This App is available for free download for both Android and iPhone devices. To access the Spanish version, set the phone’s language to Spanish. The App calculates heat index, risk levels and reminders on protective actions you can take. To learn more, visit https://www.osha.gov/heat/heat-app
National Integrated Heat Health Information System – https://Heat.gov: This web portal provides tools and resources to help federal, state, and local entities reduce the health, economic, and infrastructural impacts of extreme heat. The site includes tools and mapping resources, identifies people at risk of extreme heat impacts and climate and health outlooks. Also included is a link to the U.S. Centers for Disaster Control and Prevention’s new heat and health index website at https://ephtracking.cdc.gov/Applications/heatTracker/
New Guide from National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Worker Training Program (https://www.niehs.nih.gov/): NIEHS has published the guide "Building Blocks for a Heat Stress Prevention Training Program". There is a lot of great resource information in this guide that creates awareness of heat risk and prevention of heat stress for anyone who is working in those conditions. Considering sharing with agriculture operations including farmers and ranchers to protect everyone from heat stress on the job. Link to the guide: https://tools.niehs.nih.gov/wetp/public/hasl_get_blob.cfm?ID=14403
Animal Care and Extreme Heat: Resources are available to help producers and people with pets care for their animals during periods of extreme heat. Here are just a couple:
• UNL Beef - https://beef.unl.edu/. Search keywords to help you find information on addressing heat stress and cattle.
• Managing Sheep and Goats for Heat Stress (G2355)
• HotHog – Heat Stress App for Android and iPhones. (Purdue University, University of Illinois, USDA-ARS). Article: Producers Can Now go “Whole Hog” on New Heat Stress App for Pigs (June 15, 2023, USDA-ARS).
• Keep Pets Safe in Hot Weather – American Red Cross | Ready.gov