Hundreds of deaths, thousands of injuries, billions of dollars is cost of extreme heat in California

A blistering California heat wave over the past week and through the Fourth of July holiday could be topped off by the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth. That kind of extreme heat has led to more deaths than wildfires and cost billions of dollars over a decade, according to the state insurance department.

Following through on a mandate from 2022, a new report from the department looked at seven extreme heat events in the state from 2013 to 2022 and found they took the lives of several hundred Californians.

The events also had a total economic impact of $7.7 billion in the form of lost wages and productivity, agricultural and manufacturing disruptions, power outages, infrastructure damage and more.

The state’s top 20 deadliest wildfires, dating back to 1933, killed a total of 312 people, according to Cal Fire. The death toll from the extreme heat events identified by the Insurance Department was higher — estimated at nearly 460 in a first-of-its-kind report the department released last week. And it is likely that the toll was actually greater, at nearly 4,000 in a decade, a 2019 Los Angeles Times analysis showed.

Michael Mendez, an assistant professor of environmental planning and policy at UC Irvine and author of “Climate Change from the Streets,” agreed that the toll is most likely higher, because extreme heat’s effects can be hard to designate and quantify.

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