A Robocall Is Not a Neighbor

The Docket's Climate Past section examines historical turning points in climate adaptation. This week, we spoke with a cooling center coordinator about the institutional infrastructure Chicago built after 739 people died in the July 1995 heat wave — and what that infrastructure still can't reach. Wanda Kasprzak is a composite character drawn from publicly documented DFSS program structures, CDC research, and Eric Klinenberg's fieldwork. She is not a real person, though the system she describes is. Every operational detail in this interview is sourced from city records, federal reports, or published investigations. We invented her so we could talk honestly about a job no one in that job would be authorized to describe this candidly.

The week before this conversation, Chicago was under an Extreme Heat Warning, with the heat index at or above 100°F for multiple consecutive days.¹ The city activated 256 cooling center locations across six departments.² Somewhere in the DFSS offices, someone was watching the 311 queue, coordinating robocalls to registered seniors, and checking whether delegate agency outreach teams had enough bus cards.

We wanted to talk to that person.

You manage a system that was essentially built because 739 people died in five days. What does that inheritance feel like on a Tuesday in July?

Wanda: It feels like a spreadsheet. And I don't say that to be glib. The weight of it lives in the spreadsheet. Heat index hits 90, and a cascade fires: robocalls go out through OEMC to everyone on the senior notification registry.³ I'm checking which of our six community service centers are staffed. I'm confirming delegate agencies have weekend teams ready, because our centers close Friday at five.⁴ I'm looking at the home-delivered meals routes because those 9,200 drivers are basically our most reliable contact with isolated seniors. They're told to watch for people in distress.⁵ And I'm watching the 311 well-being check queue to make sure requests are actually getting resolved, not just logged.⁶

So it's a Tuesday. It's 94 degrees. And I'm running a system that was designed to make sure 1999 wasn't 1995. And it worked. 103 deaths instead of 485.⁷ That's real. But the mechanism that made it work was increasing daily contacts with elderly residents. That's literally what the CDC credited.⁷ My whole day is about maintaining the infrastructure for those contacts while knowing that the people most likely to die are the ones I don't have a number for.

How many people are on the notification registry?

Wanda: I can't give you a fixed number because it shifts. People register, people die, phone numbers go dead. But here's what I can tell you: the registry is opt-in. You sign up, or your relative signs you up, or you're already in our senior services network.⁸ The 1995 dead were precisely the people who were not in anyone's network. A hundred and seventy bodies went unclaimed. The Public Administrator's Office had to search for relatives who hadn't noticed someone was missing.⁹

So when people ask me if the system works, I say: it works for the people in it.

That's a hell of a caveat.

Wanda: I've had twelve years to refine it.

The cooling centers themselves. You're coordinating locations across six different city departments?

Wanda: Six departments, different hours, different rules. Libraries, park district fieldhouses, police stations, City Colleges, our DFSS centers, senior centers.¹⁰ A third of the indoor locations are closed on weekends. Over a hundred close by 5 PM at least three days a week.¹¹ And heat stress in a building that's been absorbing sun all day peaks after five. So our primary infrastructure goes offline during the most dangerous hours. That's just math.

The 24-hour options are police district stations. Twenty-two of them, always open.¹⁰ But I say this carefully: a police station lobby is not the same environment as a senior center. For some populations, the security signage alone is a deterrent. There was reporting on the Jesse White Center where signs explain how to report suspicious activity and note that police may be called.¹¹ If you're unhoused, if you have a record, if you're undocumented, you might read that sign and keep walking. I would.

So who actually uses cooling centers?

Wanda: Almost nobody, proportionally. A Healthy Chicago survey found 89 percent of adults use AC at home. Three percent reported going to a cooler location.¹¹ CDC research from Arizona found that among adults 65 and older, only 8 percent had ever visited a cooling center. Over half didn't even know what one was.¹²

I manage 256 locations that serve roughly 3 percent of the population, and the people who need them most are the least likely to show up. That's the job description. You can put it on my tombstone.

Tell me about the meal drivers.

Wanda: Oh, the meal drivers. Okay. So DFSS runs home-delivered meals to about 9,200 seniors. During a heat event, those drivers are instructed to watch for seniors in distress while making deliveries.⁵ Which means we've accidentally built the city's most intimate surveillance network for isolated elderly people, and it runs on the logistics of a food delivery program.

The drivers aren't trained as health workers. They're meal delivery workers with a secondary instruction. But they're going inside buildings, they're seeing whether someone answers the door, they're noticing if the apartment feels like a convection oven. They are, functionally, the last human contact some of these people have on a given day.

And the route only runs during delivery windows. Not at night. Not on weekends unless we've specifically activated expanded service.

I think about this constantly. The Semenza study after 1995 found that the strongest risk factor for dying was being confined to bed, with an odds ratio of 8.2. Not leaving home daily was 6.7.¹³ A working air conditioner cut your risk by 70 percent.¹³ But the finding that haunts me is the social contact one: visiting an air-conditioned place cut risk in half, and group activities were protective.¹³ The mechanism isn't just temperature. It's whether anyone sees you.

The 2022 Cooling Ordinance added a new layer. Buildings over 80 feet have to provide air-conditioned common spaces when the heat index exceeds 80°F.¹⁴ Does that change your job?

Wanda: In theory, it means I have fewer people to worry about in large residential buildings. In practice, enforcement goes through the Department of Buildings, which is a separate department with its own priorities and its own inspection backlog. I can't tell you how many buildings are actually compliant. I can tell you that the ordinance specifically requires permanent cooling systems, no fans, no evaporative coolers, maintained at 75°F and 50 percent humidity.¹⁴ In buildings classified as housing for older persons, every indoor common space must be air-conditioned. That's a real mandate. Whether it's a real outcome, I honestly don't know yet. Ask me in three Julys.

Klinenberg compared two neighborhoods, North Lawndale and Little Village, that had similar poverty levels but very different death rates. His answer was social infrastructure: street life, organizations, trust.¹⁵ Your system is essentially trying to institutionalize what he showed was organic. Can you?

Wanda: That's the question I've been sitting with for twelve years.

Klinenberg was right that the people who died were isolated not just personally but structurally. Abandoned neighborhoods, eroded social services, fear of crime keeping windows shut and doors locked.¹⁶ The plan we built after that tries to compensate with institutional contact: robocalls, meal drivers, delegate agency outreach teams carrying water and bus cards and food gift cards.¹⁷

And it's better than nothing. Genuinely, meaningfully better.

What keeps me up is the Smart911 thing. They recently added a feature where you can indicate on your Smart911 profile whether you have air conditioning, so first responders know your address is high-risk.¹⁸ Clever piece of institutional design. But who fills in a Smart911 profile? People who are already engaged with systems. People who have smartphones and internet access and the executive function to complete an online form. The people Klinenberg wrote about, the ones behind locked doors on meager Social Security, afraid to open windows, they're not filling in Smart911 profiles.

Footnotes

1. City of Chicago, OEMC Extreme Heat Warning, June 2026. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/emerg_mang/news/2026/June/ExtremeHeatWarning.html ↩

2. City of Chicago, OEMC, July 29, 2024 heat advisory. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/emerg_mang/news/2024/july/SevereWXandHeat.html ↩

3. City of Chicago, DFSS Extreme Weather Resources. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fss/provdrs/serv/svcs/extreme-weather-resources.html ↩

4. City of Chicago, OEMC, August 24, 2024 — delegate agency operations. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/emerg_mang/news/2024/august/MoreHeatSafety.html ↩

5. City of Chicago, OEMC, July 2025 heat advisory. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/emerg_mang/news/2025/july/ExtremeHeat.html ↩ ↩²

6. City of Chicago, DFSS Extreme Weather Resources — 311 well-being check monitoring. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fss/provdrs/serv/svcs/extreme-weather-resources.html ↩

7. CDC MMWR, "Heat-Related Deaths — Chicago, Illinois, 1996–2001, and United States, 1979–1999." https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5226a2.htm ↩ ↩²

8. City of Chicago, Weather Relief page — Extreme Weather Notification System. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/fss/provdrs/serv/svcs/how_to_find_weatherreliefinchicago.html ↩

9. Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago heat wave profile, July 2002. https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/2002/07/01/heat_wave/ ↩

10. City of Chicago, "Beat the Heat." https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem/supp_info/MediaToolKits0/BeattheHeat.html ↩ ↩²

11. Midstory, "Chicago's Cooling Centers Provide Needed Relief. But Are They Enough?" https://www.midstory.org/chicagos-cooling-centers-provide-needed-relief-but-are-they-enough/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

12. CDC MMWR, "Extreme Heat Exposure: Access and Barriers to Cooling Centers — Maricopa and Yuma Counties, Arizona, 2010–2020." ↩

13. Semenza JC, et al. "Heat-related deaths during the July 1995 heat wave in Chicago." New England Journal of Medicine 335(2):84–90, 1996. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8649494/ ↩ ↩² ↩³

14. Around the Town HVAC, Chicago Cooling Ordinance explainer. https://aroundthetownhvac.com/chicagos-cooling-ordinance-what-you-need-to-know/ ↩ ↩²

15. H-Net review (Larabee on Klinenberg). https://networks.h-net.org/node/22277/reviews/22774/larabee-klinenberg-heat-wave-social-autopsy-disaster-chicago ↩

16. Klinenberg, Eric. Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2002. https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo20809880.html ↩

17. City of Chicago, OEMC Extreme Heat Warning, June 2026 — HOP team supplies. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/emerg_mang/news/2026/June/ExtremeHeatWarning.html ↩

18. City of Chicago, OEMC, July 2025 — Smart911 AC indicator. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/oem/provdrs/emerg_mang/news/2025/july/ExtremeHeat.html ↩