Heat wave bakes Apple, others

Associated Press

NEW YORK

The urban Northeast baked like a potato wrapped in foil Friday as record-breaking, 100-degree temperatures and steam-bath humidity combined with the heat-trapping effects of asphalt and concrete to make millions of people miserable.

The mercury in Newark, N.J., reached 108, the highest temperature ever recorded in the city. Airports near Washington and Baltimore hit 105. Philadelphia reached 104, Boston 103, Portland, Maine, and Concord, N.H., 101 and Providence, R.I., 100. New York City hit 104 degrees, just 2 short of its all-time high, and with the oppressive humidity, it felt like 113.

Donald Demarque, a handyman, sat outside an auto repair shop in the broiling Bronx, waiting to get the air conditioner checked on his Nissan.

“It’s only working at about half power,” he said. “I think if it was a regular day I could put up with it, but not today. Today you don’t want to have the car windows open.”

In Baltimore, a homeless Dale Brown said he buys a $3.50 day pass to ride the commuter rail system to stay cool — and sober.

“I’m surprised more homeless people don’t do that,” he said. “That kills a lot of the day. One more day successful without drinking.”

In Philadelphia, 50 of the city’s 70 pools operated on 45-minute cycles to give everyone a chance to get in. Some New Yorkers were unable to take a dip to cool off at some beaches in Brooklyn and Staten Island after millions of gallons of raw sewage spilled from a waste treatment plant.

The heat wave wafted in from the Midwest — it began last weekend and did not break until Friday in Chicago — and is a suspected or confirmed cause in more than a dozen deaths around the country. On Friday, the medical examiner’s office in Chicago listed heat stress or heat stroke as the cause of death for seven people. An 18-year-old landscaper who died Thursday night in Louisville, Ky., had a temperature of 110, the coroner said.

Jake Crouch, a climatologist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., said the heat wave is taking its place in duration alongside deadly hot spells in 1988 and 1995 that lasted a week or more.

On Friday, power supplies were stretched, and utilities were hoping that some businesses would close early for the weekend.

Con Edison in New York set a record for power demand at 1 p.m., breaking a mark set Aug. 2, 2006, utility spokesman Bob McGhee said.

Dangerous-heat advisories and air quality alerts were sent out for most of the Northeast on Friday. Richard Ruvo, section chief in New York for the Environmental Protection Administration, said: “Today is a very bad day.”