An NPR investigation reveals that heat kills approximately 9,000 Americans every year, far exceeding official records. In Arizona's Maricopa County alone, which includes Phoenix, the number of heat-related deaths consistently exceeds the annual toll from weather disasters like hurricanes and floods. Research by geographer Patricia Solis and her colleagues found that mobile home residents in Maricopa County are six to eight times more likely to die from heat-related issues than those living in traditional housing. This disparity is attributed to various factors, including the age and condition of most manufactured homes.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-07,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
'Her body temperature was 106': How heat is killing Americans in their homes
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heat → kill → homes
An NPR investigation finds that heat kills thousands of Americans every year.
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heat → find → Americans
But official records radically undercount the toll.
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records → undercount → toll
In this series, we are bringing you stories that reveal why this happens and what can be done.
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Heat kills thousands of people across the U.S. every year.
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But not everyone faces the same risk.
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everyone → face → risk
Some of those most in danger are the millions of Americans who live in manufactured housing like mobile homes and trailers.
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who → live → homes
But research and policy are only recently catching up to that reality.
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Patricia Solis discovered it almost by accident.
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Solis is a geographer at Arizona State University, which means she uses maps to sleuth out patterns that might otherwise be invisible.
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In 2018, she was brand new to ASU and tasked with finding solutions to one of Arizona's most pressing problems: how to keep its residents from dying in the state's ever-increasing heat.
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Arizona regularly records hundreds of heat-related deaths each year, and state officials acknowledge the number might be even higher.
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In Maricopa County alone, home to Phoenix and where ASU is based, the number of heat-linked deaths consistently exceeds the entire annual toll across the U.S. from weather disasters like hurricanes, floods and tornadoes.
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number → base → hurricanes
"That amount of casualties every single year, it just is too many," Solis says.
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"It becomes a crisis.
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And that's really what we were feeling as a community.
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Solis wanted to understand who was most at risk, and why.
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who → want → risk
So she did what she is trained to do, as a geographer: She went to the maps.
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Soon after she was hired, she gathered a group of similarly motivated people — researchers, county officials, state public health officers and more — in a big room on ASU's campus.
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Up on a big screen, Solis projected a map of the Phoenix area.
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She then overlaid it with a map of all the heat-related deaths in the region, each represented by a little white dot.
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Then she added one more layer of data — where people were getting help paying their electric bills each summer, from public programs or local organizations.
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An obvious pattern emerged.
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Those clusters turned out to be mobile home parks.
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clusters → turn → ?
Solis and colleagues ultimately figured out that mobile home residents in Maricopa County are some six to eight times more likely to die from heat-related issues than residents in traditional housing.
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residents → figure → housing
They are among the thousands of people dying from heat in the U.S. every year.
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A new investigation from NPR and Boston University finds that roughly 9,000 Americans die from heat-related causes each year — more than five times what federal statistics show.
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And a growing body of evidence points to manufactured housing as a major risk factor across the country.
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The reasons are complicated, including the age and condition of most manufactured housing stock, how it is financed, and the fact that people living in these homes are more likely to be dealing with other financial and health issues.
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people → include → issues
"Some of us are experiencing heat as an inconvenience," says Karina Martinez, who works on the city of Tucson's heat team.
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who → experience → team
Sheri Petty was the kind of person everyone relied on.
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everyone → rely → person
The one who drove a friend's son to doctors' appointments when their car was on the fritz.
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The one who showed up to choir practice every week.
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The host who piled the Thanksgiving table high, even though she didn't have much money.
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she → pile → money
She lived with her daughter, Tara Gentner, and Tara's daughter in a blue trailer on the outskirts of Tucson.
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The house was small, but the location was beautiful, Gentner says: an acre, dotted with spare but graceful trees.
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"You know, the perfect desert setting," she says.
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"My daughter had a swing set in the yard.
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daughter → have → yard
"
But that desert setting could get very hot, especially as human-caused climate change makes southern Arizona heat waves longer, hotter and more frequent.
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Tucson experiences about twice as many hot nights now as it did in the 1990s, when Petty moved to her trailer.
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Petty → experience → trailer
…and 82 more, not listed.
