It wasn’t too-too hot quite yet when Shaua Thomas’ electricity was shut off in early June after she fell behind on her bills. In St. Ann, Missouri, the small city just north of Saint Louis, where Thomas lived, it was 88 degrees that day, June 11. But in the weeks that followed, the temperature skyrocketed as a heat dome weather system settled over a large swath of the eastern half of the country, including Missouri.
On June 23, the day Thomas, who was 55, was found dead in her sweltering apartment, the temperature hit 96 degrees, and the heat index was well over 100.
The temperature was similarly high — in the 90s — in Dallas over the weekend just prior to Thomas’s death. Jacob Taylor, a 28-year veteran letter carrier, was covering a shift that Saturday, and was driving one of the Postal Service’s older mail trucks that lack air conditioning. “I was told that a customer saw him entering his mail together to make deliveries, all of a sudden, collapsed,” Kimetra Lewis of the Dallas Union for Letter Carriers said. Taylor died later that day. He was only 55.
Heat Is a Killer — and Victims Are Often Black
Extreme heat is a ruthless killer, but it’s not always easy to see it as such: while heat is increasingly understood to be the deadliest form of extreme weather, deaths caused by extreme heat are very difficult to identify, and are frequently misattributed to other causes. But as high temperatures soar even higher due to climate change, there are increasingly heat-related deaths that, rather than going largely unnoticed, end up getting covered in the media and otherwise standing out. And like Thomas and Taylor, the victims in these very public heatwave deaths are very often Black.
In 2024, it was Adrienne Boulware, the prisoner who died in the Central California Women’s Facility when the temperature in Chowchilla hit 110 degrees. In 2023, it was Eugene Gates, another Black letter carrier in Dallas, who died while working his route during a heatwave.
This is no coincidence. As a new report from the Center for America Progress puts it, “Those who are most vulnerable to heat-related health effects include working-class, low-income, and majority Black or Latino communities, as well as people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, people who are pregnant, people who work or exercise outside, older adults, and young children.” There were more than 21,000 heat-related deaths in the U.S. between 1999 and 2023, according to CAP, with the number of deaths per year steadily rising since 2016.
And now this summer has both Shauna Thomas and Jacob Taylor, whose tragic final moments are representative of broader problems that can turn dangerous heat deadly: a lack of air conditioning and outdoor work.
A Hot Weather Law Meets Reality
An official cause of death for Thomas has not yet been released, and it’s said that she had preexisting health issues before the heat wave. But heat certainly appears to have been a factor, if not the outright cause of her death. Had the heat hit a little bit earlier, or state laws been a little bit different, her A/C might not have been unavailable to her at the time she needed it most.
There’s no provision for turning power back on when it gets dangerously hot.
Missouri has what’s called the Hot Weather Law, which makes it so utilities are barred from shutting off services for electric or natural gas when the temperature is forecasted to be over 95 degrees or the heat index is expected to hit 105 degrees. The law is in effect between June 1 and September 30 every year.
While Thomas’ electricity was shut off after the Hot Weather Law went into effect for the year, the temp was below the 95-degree threshold at the time. There’s no provision for turning power back on when it gets dangerously hot.
“We are saddened to learn about the passing of one of our customers,” a spokesperson from Ameren Missouri, the electric utility in St. Ann, said in a statement. “While we cannot share specific customer account details due to privacy considerations, our thoughts are with the individual’s family and friends.”
Incompatibile With the Climate Crisis
For delivery drivers, whether they work for the postal service like Jacob Taylor did or for UPS or another private company, the extreme heat problem is twofold: There’s the outdoor portion of the work, and then there’s driving around for hours on end in vehicles that, more often than not, lack air conditioning entirely.
The classic USPS mail truck is officially called a Grumman Long-Life Vehicle, and the postal service built up its fleet of these utilitarian trucks over the course of a decade starting in 1987. While many have surpassed their expected 25-year lifespan, in many ways, they’re incompatible with the climate crisis era. “The only form of cooling in the USPS’s old Grumman LLV mail trucks…was a hilariously small fan or opening the side doors and driving as fast as possible,” according to Car and Driver.
Without A/C, the temperature inside the mail trucks can run significantly higher than it is outside on hot days, which can quickly become dangerous as the mercury ticks upward. The Postal Service is in the process of updating its fleet, replacing LLVs with Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, which have air conditioning, and the majority of the trucks will be all-electric too.
But the switch-over process will take time, and summers are only getting hotter.
