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- Burnaby cooling centres see uptick in visits as third heat warning hits Metro Van
Burnaby cooling centres see uptick in visits as third heat warning hits Metro Van
After a slow start to summer, the Lower Mainland has caught up with last year’s heat warnings, and Burnaby’s cooling centres have already been opened more times than in 2021.
Wednesday, the cooling centre opened for the fourth time this year, according to city spokesperson Cole Wagner, and there has been a significant uptick in the number of people visiting the centres.
This year, the cooling centres were activated from June 26-27, July 25-Aug. 1, Aug. 8-9, and yesterday, for a total of 13 days so far. While that’s more instances in which the cooling centres have been open, they were actually open longer last year, for a total of 18 days in three activation periods.
So far this year, the city had seen over 2,800 visits over those 13 days, compared to 1,560 last year.
“This isn’t a perfect one-to-one comparison, as our approach to the cooling centres in 2021 shifted during different heat events, partly due to changes in the COVID-19 guidance from our health partners,” Wagner said.
As for who’s attending the cooling centres, Wagner told the Beacon it’s a “wide variety,” as it was in 2021—albeit with more of a certain demographic in attendance.
“Seniors, families, and youths are our primary demographics, but this year, in particular, we’ve started to see more working adults choosing to come to our cooling centres with their laptops and work materials during the day as well,” he said.
Residents are largely expected to arrange their own transportation to cooling centres, but Wagner noted that assistance is available “in special circumstances.”
“Seniors’ transportation services will be available to registered individuals of the Better At Home program, and citizen support services staff may also be available to provide transportation to vulnerable seniors who live alone,” he said.
But while the cooling centre has been opened more frequently in Burnaby, the federal government has issued the same amount of heat advisories as last year, according to Environment Canada meteorologist Derek Lee.
Last year, through the entire summer, there were three heat warning events, Lee said, including the deadly heat dome that lasted about a week. It also includes two heat warning events of about three to five days.
This year, by comparison, we’ve just entered our third. One short one at the end of June lasted two days, followed by the nearly weeklong heat warning at the end of July.
This week’s heat warning is expected to end today, making it another two-day event.
“We can also easily get another one at the end of August if things do pan out and get hot then, but right now we’re kind of tied hand-in-hand with last year,” Lee said. “But definitely last year was a historic heat event.”
Lee noted that, on top of climate change, another human factor in the frequency and intensity of heat waves is urban development and the increasing number of highrises and cement structures.
“So it’s harder to cool down the city itself, to be honest, because we’re in an urban heat zone,” he said.
Lee noted that the province has created a new heat alert response system in response to last year’s heat dome, which left hundreds dead across BC.
That system, according to the BC government, includes heat warnings and extreme heat emergencies, the latter of which would be broadcast through the national public alerting system, Alert Ready.
That system, which is deployed for Amber alerts, tsunamis, wildfires, and flood warnings, sends a notification to smartphones to broadcast the presence of an emergency.