Each year, cold kills nearly 700 people

SCRIPPS HOWARD
As this winter plods along, here's a fact to chill the blood: On average, 689 Americans freeze to death each year.
Medical experts complain that hypothermia is almost always preventable. But dozens of people have frozen to death as the sudden February cold snap threatens hundreds of homeless and elderly people living on the streets or in inadequately heated structures.
Most prone to freezing are people living in Alaska, New Mexico, North Dakota and Montana. But even Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina have posted significant death rates by the cold.
Seventy percent of the Americans who died of hypothermia in 2003 were men with a median age of 61, according to federal death records recently released by the National Center for Health Statistics.
Not all victims of the cold are vagrants, however. At least 142 people died in their homes in 2003, often poor and elderly residents with inadequate heating.
About 82 percent of the victims were single, divorced or widowed. A disproportionate number were black or of other racial or ethnic minorities.
Emergency workers and charitable organizations, lulled by an unusually warm January in much of the nation, scrambled to establish emergency shelters this month in hopes of reducing the hypothermia death toll.
The Baltimore City Health Department recently upgraded its "Code Blue" program to monitor 911 calls so that health workers can respond quickly to any weather-related injuries. Authorities are educating the staffs of 18 overnight emergency shelters on the symptoms of hypothermia, which include involuntary shivering, slowed or slurred speech, confusion or sleepiness and poor control of body movements.
January historically is the deadliest month, with February not far behind. In 2003, 168 people died of hypothermia in January, 135 died in February and 123 died in December. But cold-related fatalities also occurred in the summer, often among swimmers or people exposed to cold water.