UNBEARABLE HEAT

LATE LAST JUNE, farmers in Walla Walla, Washington, noticed something odd happening to their onions. Walla Walla, an oasis in the middle of the state’s high desert, is bursting with vineyards, wheat fields and acres of the city’s eponymous sweet onions. As temperatures climbed above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, then above 110 degrees, the oversized onions began to burn, pale blisters forming underneath their papery skins. When the temperature reached 116, the onions started cooking, their flesh dissolving into mush.

Four miles away is the Washington State Penitentiary. It’s one of the country’s oldest prisons, established in the 1880s, before Washington achieved statehood. In June 2021, over 2,000 people were incarcerated in its large concrete buildings. In the Hole — the name incarcerated people use for the solitary confinement unit — the air conditioning had stopped working. Dozens of people spent 23 hours a day locked in small concrete and metal cells, even as temperatures continued to soar.

Washington isn’t known for extreme heat, but far above the fields and prison, two air pressure systems had collided, creating a massive heat dome: a cap of warm air that sealed in the heat and blocked the flow of cool marine breezes from the Pacific. The resulting weeklong heat wave brought some of the hottest temperatures that the state has ever experienced.

State officials and media had begun to sound the alarm the week before. “‘Heat dome’ may push Western Washington temperatures into record-breaking territory,” the Seattle Times wrote on Sunday, June 20, the first day of summer. Two days later, the National Weather Service started issuing excessive heat watches and warnings for the upcoming weekend covering almost all of Oregon and Washington. Seattle and King County offered emergency guidance: “Spend more time in air-conditioned places. If you don’t have air conditioning, consider visiting a mall, movie theater or other cool public places.” Around the state, people began stockpiling ice and ice cream, and fans and air conditioners became harder and harder to find.

That was when Darrell Cook started to worry.

at the Twin Rivers Unit inside the Monroe Correctional Complex, the state’s second-largest prison, had been following local news broadcasts about the impending heat wave on TV. Cook has diabetes, which puts him at risk for heat-related illness, such as heat stroke. He was concerned