Vulnerable People and Places Blog

Photo by Michał Parzuchowski on Unsplash When Portland's 2021 heat dome killed 69 people in a single week, most of us pictured the same thing: someone unhoused, caught outside with nowhere to go. It's a reasonable assumption. People sleeping on pavement during a 116-degree afternoon should be in the most danger, and they are at risk. But the medical examiner's data tells a different story, and it's one worth sitting with. Of those 69 deaths during the heat dome, four were homeless . The other 65 were people who lived in houses and apartments. The 2022 heat wave was similar: of five confirmed heat deaths, only one person was unhoused. In summer 2024, Multnomah County recorded 14 heat-associated deaths, and again, just one of those people was without a home. Two out of every three people who have died from extreme heat in Multnomah County since 2021 were men over 50. Most lived alone. Most did not have working air conditioning, or did not turn it on. That desc...

  Let’s paint a picture… You’re 18, fresh from high school, can’t afford college, no one will hire you because you have zero experience, and you just have to get out of your parents’ house. What do you do? You pick a branch. You serve your time, you form trauma bonds with the most unlikely people, and you’re immersed in a highly structured and detail-oriented environment where mistakes kill. To relieve some of that work stress, you go drinking with your buddies. After a year, it’s a social pastime; after two, it’s a habit. At four years, you need it just to sleep at night. You’ve blown every paycheck on youthful mistakes of high interest rates, obscene amounts of alcohol, and actually edible food, since the chow hall is sickening. You’ve collected every joint pop and muscle strain a body can get, not to mention the nightmares, the flinching at any sudden movements or loud noises. You know how to do your job very well, you are highly specialized and critical to mission succes...