‘Your City Could Be Better’: How Las Vegas Is Handling Record-Breaking Heat — Presented By City Cast Pittsburgh

0:00This is your city could be better because it could be. I'm David Floss. If you love your city and still complain about it, you're in the right place. When you look at Vegas, you see the future. The world is getting hotter and drier, which means that most cities are getting a little more like Las Vegas every year, which also means that a lot of cities can learn from Las Vegas. It's going to get incredibly creative about how it handles water and heat. Those of you who are your city could be better listeners. Your city could be better loyalists know that we already did a fascinating episode a few months ago about how Las Vegas makes astonishing efforts to recycle water. Today, CityCast Las Vegas hosts Jesse Merrick. He is back. He is back to talk about how his city is defending itself from its crazy heat. Jesse, welcome back to your city. Could be better. Thanks for having me. So describe to me what the heat in Las Vegas feels like on a summer afternoon.

1:03Yeah, it's brutal. Whenever anybody asks me that question of like, what does 110 plus feel like? The image that comes to my mind is if you've seen Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Arc, when that dude's face is melting that one scene, that's what it feels like. It just feels like everything's burning. There's nothing you can do. It is miserable. Another way to put it is just like blow dryer effect. Anytime you walk outside, you're just like baking, non-stop one is that hot. I mean, there's just a sort of tragic element to this, which is you had in 2024 when you had a particularly bad summer, 500 heat related deaths in Clark County, the Vegas main county. So what are some of the other impacts on health and quality of life? Yeah, just to your point of 2024, I mean, that one was brutal. That's the first time I personally, in my time living in Vegas since 2019, have ever felt like, man, I don't know if I can do this. It was brutal. We had so many days of 100 plus degrees. We broke like every record of days consecutively of 100 plus or days of 110. It was insane. It's so sad to see how many people lost their lives because of heat.

2:07Obviously, it impacts everybody differently. For the most part, if you look at other places where it gets extremely cold in the winter, people aren't going outside as often. That's a very similar thing here in the heat. You're not going to spend as much time outdoors. And obviously that's not the same as life and death type of thing, but your quality of life change is not being outdoors enough. You have to walk your dogs ridiculously early in the morning or late into the evening. I'm really what's going down. Like when would you do a dog walk? When the same dog walk in the summer? Yeah, actually recently just incorporated that into my routine because I'm watching my mom's dog. And so I've been up about 536 in the morning every morning, taking them to go for walks. Now we've been lucky because it's been a bit cooler lately. But during those extreme heat stretches, I was up at 530 out walking around the neighborhood before the sun even came up. Because you literally cannot walk a dog at 1 p.m. No, because it'll burn their paws. It's so hot. And I know we'll get into it here on the show. We don't do a lot of the things that some other cities have done in terms of pavement and asphalt and stuff to cool the temperatures there.

3:07It's brutal on these dogs. A lot of people incorporate the booties and things like that that they walk weird on. But it's big to get them out there when the sun's not just beaten down all day. Okay, so 2024, big year, because you know, Las Vegas is always, it's always been in the desert. It has always been hot. But 2024 is a kind of sea change here because you have this huge human cost, all these deaths, this enormous heat. And remarkably, the government of Nevada and Las Vegas, I guess, have taken steps. So what did they do? What are the Nevada legislature do after 2024? Yeah, so that session actually passed the mandate. It's assembly bill 96 that basically require the state's two most populous county cities, basically any city over 100,000 people to build out heat mitigation into their long term master plans of like growth and everything like that. And it really concentrated on drinking water access and public cooling spaces in particular. So let's talk about that.

4:08So what is it that under these new mandates, Las Vegas has to do for people as regards to water and cooling? Yeah, so the big one is like access to cooling centers, which we have, I believe about 20 of those facilities around the valley right now. But the big thing that's like a sticking point with those is their hours are nine to five like normal business hours. And as we kind of talked about, heat doesn't discriminate about what time it is. It doesn't clock in and clock out, you know what I mean? So like, you know, they're trying to push to get those open 24 seven, make them more available to people when they're going to need them. Because you know, if you're working, you're very likely going to be somewhere where there is air conditioning itself like that. But then when you go home, let's say you can't afford to run your AC or whatever it is, you need to have access to places like that also to public drinking water. And a big part of that is awareness. They're actually employing, you know, interactive like water maps to point pedestrian cyclists. Like you name it, people that are out and about to where they can actually get like clean drinking water at public spots like that.

5:09They're also trying to implement different shade structures, which is something they're, you know, stealing from phoenix, which they've done like fabric shade structures over like bus stops in public areas like that. Because it's crazy how much of a different shade can make. I mean, it can be like 30 degrees cooler in the shade by simply having a fabric thing over it or trees, whatever it is. And two, just in terms of how we build homes, trying to make sure they're insulated better, make sure the technology for HVAC units are better and passive cooling to and passive cooling for people that don't know is basically anything that doesn't require electricity to cool in area. Are there people, I mean, there must be some people, are there significant number of people in in Clark County who do not have any air conditioning or is it that people have air conditioning, but they don't run it because they can't afford to pay their power bill or something. Yeah. So we actually recently did a show where we dove into some reporting from the Las Vegas Review Journal where they said, and I believe the number was 6,700 Las Vagans in the metro area that didn't have access to like reliable or working AC, which I think to me, like that's a staggering number when you take into account that it's 100 plus degrees, you know, recently

6:14envy energy, who's our energy provider, they were doing some work to replace some power lines in my neighborhood. And they shut the power off in the morning for about three hours. It was from I think like 945 till like one and I came home and it was like 85 degrees in my house. And that was just for a couple hours. And if you can't afford to run your AC unit and it's nonstop if I had an animal or if I was an elderly person like that's a deadly situation. 6,700 on the one hand is terrible. And the other hand actually that's a lot less than I would have guessed. I didn't that was not the, I didn't know what that number was going to be. I mean, you're talking about a metro area area of a couple million. Yeah. And to have only 6,700 people who don't have access to air conditioning teams. That seems it's not that it's a reasonable number. It just doesn't seem grotesque to me. Yeah. If you if you told me it was 100,000, I would have been that's a scary number. My thing though is like AC feels like it should be like a constitutional right of being a Las Vegas though is my thing. So like even if it was like 50, I'd be like, that's a big number.

7:16Do you so do you see in the course of your life any of these shade structures or the cooling locations or water? Is that something that is visible? Yeah. You do a little bit. I mean, the shade structures, they're still kind of moving along like this is still early within our plan. You know, like they've said like, hey, here's our plan, but they haven't necessarily given a timeline. And when we're seeing the beginning steps of the action, I know a lot of people feel like it's like, Oh, well, now you're just now noting this, noticing this after 2024. Having said that in Somerlin, which is like about 20 minutes northwest of the strip, I refer to it and people won't love this, but like our version of Orange County. If you can consider that demographic, their outdoor mall area has a bunch of shade structures built into it. There's a lot of shade. There's these fabric things, different art installations that provide shade are different shopping outlets around the valley, have things like that. So you do see that, but outside of that, not as much as you would expect in an area like Vegas, where the temperatures consistently hit 110 plus at a really interesting rate. We've already talked about this a little bit with the 6700 a minute ago, but heat is an

8:19equity issue too, right? Yeah. Because my understanding, I think this is true in Vegas as it is in most places, that the poor you are the hotter your neighborhood is. Yeah, David, it seems like there's a direct correlation between like, you know, how wealthy you are and how poor you are versus like, you know, how much access you have to shade and, you know, things like that and cooler temperatures. There was actually a study done by American forest examining tree canopies across the country. And I want to read this so I don't get this wrong. As I look at my notes here, they found that neighborhoods with a majority of people of color have 33% less tree canopy on average than majority white communities and neighborhoods with 90% or more of their residents living in poverty have 41% less tree canopy than communities with only 10% or less population in poverty. And that's big because again, as we talked about shade, just even the shade from a tree can reduce the temperature when you're standing in the shade of that tree or any sort of shade structure can reduce temperatures by like 30 degrees. And in turn, that is essentially a passive measure where like, let's say you have trees

9:22in your neighborhood outside of your home, well, okay, then the sun and those same temperatures aren't beating down on the side of your house in the afternoon. Yeah. No, I mean, I, in my city, I just move to very arboreal neighborhood. And my house is so much cooler. My yard is so much cooler. It's a huge difference. It's a game changer. I notice it like to jump in. Like I notice it when I've been walking the dog and stuff and even just when I walk around in general, like from block to block because there's certain blocks around my neighborhood that are covered in a ton of trees and certain ones that aren't. And it's a massive difference. Literally just from a minute or two as you go from each block. And this is also part of the heat mitigation plan. Yes. So you guys are part planting thousands and thousands and thousands of trees. I don't even know there were trees in Vegas that I'm being honest. Yeah. Well, and that's another whole can of words that we can get into after we discuss this whole process that we're doing the planting trees. There's actually two programs, one from the city of Las Vegas and one from Clark County. So the city of Las Vegas is actually doing what they're calling an urban forestry management

10:24plan. And they're targeting the plant 60,000 trees by 2050 to reach 25% canopy coverage across the valley, which is great. But then Clark County also is doing a community canopy giveaway where they're giving away 6,800 trees, particularly focusing on 12 zip codes that they have flagged as like heat islands in places where it's ridiculously hot. My neighborhood happens to be in one of those areas where it's saying that there's less tree cover than needs to be. So these are great programs to be able to take advantage of. But as I tease there, there's been some hiccups in this because we've done this before in Las Vegas, actually in North Las Vegas, our tree canopy dropped from 3% in 2022 to roughly 0.8% because trees planted in that giveaway started dying. Now the reason they started dying is because they got heat resistant trees, but not drought resistant trees. So they didn't last. So like I guess for other cities to pull from this, make sure if you do giveaways like this because of heat that the trees can actually last through droughts, like situations like

11:27that. Do you know what the, are there trees? So I'm looking out at this basically a forest here and I'm on these coast. They're trees everywhere. These ball sorts, they're deciduous trees that are going to shed their leaves. They're evergreens. They're just massive trees that look, they look like whole communities of people. They are, they are themselves a living ecosystem. They're ginormous, but I can't imagine that Vegas can sustain trees like that. Do, when you see it, do, does Vegas have like trees that are emphatic, big, bushy trees? Yeah, surprisingly we do. Like I get tripped out every time. I'm not like an arborist by any means. Like, you know, I am the exact opposite of a green thumb. But like when I walk around, I am amazed by the number of trees that we have that seemingly are lasting. Like my neighborhood and a lot of the areas that have like minstery and modern homes have a lot of palm trees which aren't native to the valley, but they happen to last and they pop up everywhere. But we also have tons of other trees that again, I don't know the different kinds of the trees, but are massive and have huge tree cover and some of them like growing like we're

12:31ridiculously tall. Where I'm like, how the heck do these things last? Because I had a tree in my front yard when I bought my home that was dying, that it just I had to pull it out just because it wasn't going to last. But like there's other ones in the area where the, you know, coverage of leaves and branches is massive. And I'm like, how the heck does this thing survive? It's wild to me. That is interesting. I would like to see a book of trees of Las Vegas. There you go. There's such a book. There's such a book. Brands send it to me. I read about how in Phoenix, also one of the scorching Le Haute, cities of the American West, there are now 200 miles of what they call cool, lean pavement, which has, which I guess keeps temperatures down. Is that something that you guys are trying to? Yeah. So apparently we kind of dipped our toes in that water back in 2022, but failed. Part of it, it seems is there's money to be had by these companies that have paved and

13:34things like that. And they push back against it and all of that. And essentially officials are leaning on the fact of like a dust ordinance saying that would be like an EPA violation the way that it's applied. But the people that make these products say that it's actually something that it doesn't kick up more or less dust than paving with asphalt does. Now again, the thing where things get tricky here is these asphalt companies have donated a decent amount of money to a lot of politicians in the area. So it could be one of those like wink, wink back door type of deals. But it's something to where I don't understand why it's not something we look at further because my understanding is it's cheaper to apply. It can be done through routine maintenance as they're cleaning streets and things like that. So it's not like some massive undertaking. And I've heard that it can actually last double the time of normal quote unquote asphalt. And it can cool the surface temperature or at least the temperatures by 12 degrees. I think the big thing that's interesting in this is because it's more reflective. It doesn't necessarily make it more comfortable to stand on it as the thing. So like if you were standing there that heat gets reflected and you can kind of bake even

14:36more. So that again powers on the fact of needing more shade. But in terms of cooling the air, which is something trees don't do, this stuff could help to cool the air because a lot of the problems with these impervious surfaces is that it will retain that heat and then kick it back up overnight and our temperatures don't drop. But still in the 90s, even low hundreds at night, sometimes during our really extreme heat. So I think this stuff could help limit those overnight temperatures, which honestly, as someone that lives in Vegas, that's my biggest complaint. And when it gets the hardest to deal with it is when you don't get the breaks, when it's still in the high 80s to 90s, even potentially hundreds overnight. That is interesting. I didn't understand that when I was reading about that and get that. That was a very good explanation. Thank you. So has Vegas experienced any of the benefits from these mandated heat mitigation strategies? Yeah. Is it feeling that things are getting a little bit better or not yet? I think really more that what everybody has kind of said, and even when we've had people on our show talking about it, the fact that the conversations are being had is a major win because like, let's be real about it.

15:38Like extreme heat is something that doesn't get the attention that it should deserve. It kills more people per year than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. And it's not classified as a natural disaster. So because of that, there's not a lot of funding that gets unlocked for heat mitigation and stuff. So it's really tricky to get the funding and to convince people to do it or create organizations that will do it from what I understand, Phoenix and Miami are two places or possibly the only two places that have created like heat management offices essentially. And so we're trying to do that. It's just tricky to get again, figure out how to fund those organizations. So I lean on like we haven't seen it yet. At least they're talking about it and saying they're going to do it. And again, even though they failed in North Las Vegas with the trees that didn't last, they're trying. So we're trying to take steps to make that happen. So I think it's a wait and see mode where the right discussions are being had, but we've yet to really see, you know, that the fruits of those discussions just yet. Yeah. I mean, when you do see the numbers for deaths from heat in a stagory, I mean, there was

16:41a, I think there was a heat wave in France a couple of years ago that killed something like 10,000 people. Yeah. And obviously, US cities are better equipped, but it is, this is a, this is a problem that we know is just going to get worse and worse and worse. And so even the modern world though, too, like look, like we've talked about it so many times, obviously, like nobody should be struggling with food, although tons of people do, nobody should be struggling with heat, although tons of people do. Sometimes there's nothing you can do about a tornado, a fire, a flood, whatever. But these are things that could be solved or at least mitigated. So that's why I think it's so surprising to see the numbers be so high. Right. Right. So Jesse, what can listeners in our other cities take away from this to help their city be a little bit better? Yeah. I mean, I think the big thing would be make sure you're pushing, you know, your local politicians and stuff to force, you know, mandates, kind of like we have started to do where we're making different cities factor that into their growth plan and things like that. One thing that's really interesting is our regional transit board. They created like a heat mapping thing that displayed the neighborhoods where they are

17:42suffering with extreme heat at a greater rate than a lot of the other areas. It identifies those heat islands, invest in studies like that, let organizations do things like that so that you can actually figure out what neighborhoods need them rather than just like, Hey, we're going to vastly work on heat in the entire area when you could be fixing something that's not a problem for a particular area. So that can help you zero in. So really, you know, get the answers to the test, I guess, before you take it and start doing that. And also the big one again is make sure that cooling centers, if you have them, if you don't have them, make sure that they're a thing. And if you do have them, make sure that they're open past nine to five business hours, make sure they're 24 seven. So the people that need them have access to them. Okay, let's go to our word on the street segment. Yeah. You are in this scorchingly hot city that is also heavily air conditioned. Am I a general experience of being in Vegas is actually not being hot, but often being cold because they really air conditioned the living daylights out of those casinos.

18:46They really, they do not, they do not mess around. They're at, you know, 68 something like that. You know what's crazy about the casinos too? The lot of people don't realize they use a lot of like the cooling technology they have is piping that pumps water through a lot of the walls. Like at crazy low temperatures to help make it even easier on the AC units. It's a whole nother out podcast episode in itself. Oh, okay. Well, look, that'll be your city could be better in early 2027. But so, so, but and so I think you have live in this sort of paradoxical city. You're wearing looks like a short sleeve shirt. The question is the kind of dilemma is what does a loss of egg in dress for? Do you dress for heat or do you dress for air conditioning? Is it acceptable in a professional context to look like you're trying to beat the heat? Or if you're in a professional context, do you have to look like no, I'm only going to be in air conditioning the whole time. I can't even acknowledge the fact that it was 97 degrees when I stepped out of my car for the to come here. Yeah. It really depends what you do. And like we talked about it.

19:47I think the last time on the show of my background, I used to work in local news. So I worked for the NBC affiliate out here. And when you do that, like I worked in sports, you're wearing suits all the time. Yes, you can wear a polo here and there. We're going to be outside. But unlike game days, you have to be like fully suited and booted. And it was funny because late into the season for the Vegas Golden Knights, our hockey team, we'd be covering games. If they make it pretty deep into the year, you're covering games that are happening in June for the Stanley Cup final. And you're going in there and it's freezing by our Washington capitals. That's Stanley final. Whoa, hey, what'd you guys do this last year? Okay. We came too in short to win in the cup. All right. That's old news, man. But the thing that would always get me is like, I am literally drenched in sweat outside in this full suit. I go inside and now I'm freezing. And even times like, I'd be bringing the jacket in with me while it's like 95 degrees outside. So to answer your question, though, about like balancing the professionalism and also

20:48dressing the part. But like dressing for like what the weather is, like, it's a little more skewed here. It's in Vegas, like we always joke that like you can wear whatever you want down the strip when you walk into most restaurants, you know? So it's a little more relaxed this time of year, but in a professional setting, yeah. Like you've got to deal with the sweat for a while. And the key is to make sure you're parking in shade or have remote start on your car or something like that to be able to get the AC cranking before. Otherwise, you're walking into an oven and it's brutal. And as somebody who doesn't like wearing shorts, it makes it really tough. So you got to invest in linen and different things like that that breathe well. But would you say like it would, if you know, I mean, I'm sure you traveled to non, yeah, non desert cities all the time. I actually only traveled to places that are 110 degrees plus. That's my thing. That's right. The Phoenix Phoenix Tucson Reno access. Occasionally you get to like, West Texas. There you go. Love him a real low. This time here. But if you if you are somewhere, if you're somewhere, if you compared like, I don't

21:52know, people in a restaurant in New York to people in a restaurant in Vegas, do you think the people in Vegas are the more likely to be wearing shorts and t-shirts? Definitely. I would say so. Yeah, especially to a place like New York, yeah, because like you will be out at like different like nice restaurants or even like mid-level restaurants. And I'll look over and there's people in cargo shorts and flip flops and a golf polo. And that's just normal, you know, like that's just a thing here because again, like you're trying to beat the heat and not pass out from it, which is understandable. And I think again, most of the restaurants are cool with that. They'll be a little laxed on it. It's the higher end ones that try and enforce somewhat of a dress code. I did go one time to a restaurant at the Bellagio. I'm forgetting the name of it, but it was a steakhouse there at some friends in town. And my buddy tried to walk in with shorts and they actually made him rent a pair of slacks. It was hilarious. And that's the only place that I've seen that. So it's very rare. How much was that? How much was it? How much it wasn't? It wasn't much though. I want to say it was like 20 bucks or something, but it's like that on top of the dinner.

22:54But like he was so embarrassed, it was hilarious. Jesse Marik, host of City Castles Vegas. Thank you for coming on. Your city could be better. Once again, beating the heat, saving the water. Good job preparing for the future. Yeah, thanks David. I appreciate it. Listen to Jesse every weekday on City Castles Vegas. That's all for today's episode of your city could be better. I am your host David Plotz. And our producers are Arya Bracci, Priyanka Tillve, Jesse Marik and Leila Mohamed, our music is by Carl Christensen if you are enjoying the show. Tell your friends, rate the show, leave us a review wherever you get podcasts. We'll be back next week with another conversation about how your city could be better. Thanks. Bye-bye.