As temperatures soared to 128 degrees, Death Valley National Park rangers got the call a group of six motorbikes were in trouble. All available medical personnel rushed to the scene, and the guards sent two ambulances to the park.
It’s an “all-hands-on-deck call,” said Spencer Solomon, Death Valley National Park’s emergency medical coordinator. The superheated air was too thin for emergency helicopters to respond, but the team called for help from nearby fire departments.
They arrived on Saturday to find one of the motorcyclists unresponsive, and paramedics were unsuccessful in resuscitating them. Another unconscious rider was lifted into an ambulance, where emergency medical technicians tried to treat the victim with ice as he was taken to an intensive care unit in Las Vegas. Four other motorcyclists were treated on site and released.
With record heat blanketing California and much of the West recently, Death Valley has been at least 125 degrees every day since the Fourth of July, and that line isn’t expected to change until the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
Tourist Dave Hsu, left, pretends to be cold as friend Tom Black takes a photo at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center’s digital thermometer.
Extreme heat is one of Death Valley’s biggest intrigues and the most serious security issue. It is not unusual for several people to die in the park from heatstroke in any given summer.
Located 200 feet below sea level and surrounded by steep, towering mountains that absorb the heat, the valley is consistently the hottest place on Earth.
In summer, international travelers often schedule their trips without considering the weather. (All six people who fell victim to extreme temperatures near Badwater Basin on Saturday were from Germany.)
But even Southern Californians familiar with Death Valley’s hellish reputation will trek to the park just to experience the otherworldly heat.
“In LA, people say, ‘No, don’t go out there; you’re crazy,'” said Nick Van Schaick, who visited the park earlier this week. He had spent the night in the town of Beatty, Nev., then drove to the park early Tuesday morning. “I don’t know. … There is something interesting about this landscape.”
Visitors to Death Valley National Park drive in and out of the park on Highway 190 through the Panamint Valley, where temperatures were as high as 125 degrees recently.
Virtually all heat-related deaths are preventable, experts say, but what makes heat dangerous is how it sneaks up on its victims.
The risk of Death Valley heat is very apparent. It’s hard to miss dozens of “Heat kills” signs around the park, and getting out of the car there for the first time feels like sticking your face in an oven. Within seconds, your eyes began to burn and your lips cracked. Your skin feels very dry – even if you sweat a lot, the sweat evaporates almost instantly.
But one of the first symptoms people experience when their core temperature starts to rise is confusion, which can hinder a person’s ability to recognize that something is wrong or know how to save themselves.
Studies have also shown that although almost everyone knows how to prevent heat illness, very few take action to protect themselves. Partly because many think they can handle the heat when in fact they can’t. In 2021, a Death Valley visitor died of heatstroke just days after another visitor died on the same trail.
It’s a one-two punch. Hikers ignore symptoms of heat exhaustion because they are too excited to hike or have nowhere else to go, said Bill Hanson, an instructor for Wilderness Medical Associates International and a flight paramedic in central Texas who specializes in heat-related emergencies. Then, “when a person has experienced deep enough heat exhaustion – which in itself is not a fatal condition – and they are still in that environment, the likelihood that they will make the right decision and reverse the process … is reduced because they have a reduced ability to make good decisions.
One of the reasons that humans are quickly overcome by extreme heat is that there is only one way for heat to leave the body. Blood carries heat from the core to the skin, and, when the wind is too hot to carry heat away from us, the body can release it only through the evaporation of sweat. Any sweat that drips onto the ground or is wiped off your face is a missed opportunity to cool off.
Visitors hike to the salt flats in Badwater Basin, taking advantage of cooler morning temperatures on a day when the mercury soars to 125 degrees in Death Valley National Park.
In Death Valley, the air is so dry that sweat evaporates easily, unlike in humid climates where the atmosphere contains more moisture. But with a lot of sweat, dehydration happens quickly. The park recommends that visitors replenish lost water and drink at least a gallon a day if they are physically active outside.
But constant sweating and hydration will do just that.
“A 130-degree environment … something that would have a limited shelf life in the human body’s ability to exist in that environment without technological support,” Hanson said.
Because of this, the park says to avoid going up after 10 a.m. during extreme heat and recommends not straying more than five minutes from the nearest air conditioner, whether it’s in a car or a building.
In the summer, sticking to groups can also save lives. Although it can be difficult for a confused heatstroke victim to recognize the symptoms or remember how to save themselves, friends can spot the problem. In general, if you struggle to do something that is usually easy for you – physically or mentally – stop to rest and find a cooler situation.
Muscle cramps are often the first sign your body is struggling to stay cool. This can be caused by toxic dehydration, muscle fatigue and a lack of electrolytes like sodium, which are important for transporting water and nutrients around the body. Cramps are a sign that the body’s heat-dissolving process is under stress.
Death Valley National Park visitor Steffi Meister, from Switzerland, photographed the landscape at Zabriskie Point where temperatures reached 125 degrees recently.
As the body struggles, heat exhaustion begins to set in. The brain, heart and other organs become tired because they can maintain the normal body temperature of 98 degrees. When the body exceeds 101 degrees, the victim may begin to experience dizziness, confusion and headaches. It is not uncommon for them to vomit, feel weak or even faint.
When the body exceeds 104 degrees, the entire central nervous system – responsible for regulating heat in the first place – can no longer handle the stress of high temperatures. It started off. Victims can become so disoriented and confused that they no longer understand. They may not be able to communicate. They can start convulsions and fall into a coma.
“For me, as a garden doctor, if you don’t respond, you’re going to the hospital,” Solomon said, “because your brain is cooking.”
By this time, the heat has caused irreversible damage that can leave the victim disabled for years. If the internal temperature does not drop quickly, death becomes a real possibility. Organs can fail within hours, killing the victim, even as the temperature begins to drop.
Heat illness can occur within minutes or take hours to develop. “There’s been an odd occurrence two days where we’ll get 911 calls for people who are sick” from heatstroke, Solomon said.
One of them is in the middle of the day, when it is very hot. The other is close to 11pm – visitors will feel OK during the day, but increasingly dehydrated as they continue to exert themselves. “Then, he checked into his hotel room and got sick,” Solomon said.
In some extreme cases, heatstroke can overcome a person so quickly that muscle cramps and other symptoms of heat exhaustion do not have time to show. Death Valley’s emergency response team typically gets about two or three heat illness calls per week in the summer, with visitors experiencing symptoms on the spectrum from mild fatigue to loss of consciousness.
Heatstroke experts agree on the most effective treatment: inhaling the patient as soon as possible.
“The key to survival is a body temperature below 104 within 30 minutes of the presentation of the condition,” said Douglas Casa, professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and chief executive of the Korey Stringer Institute, a leading voice in treating heatstrokes. “It’s 100% survivable if you do it, which is amazing because there aren’t many life-threatening emergencies in the world that are 100% survivable if handled properly.”
The fastest way to cool a patient down is an ice-cold bath, experts say. Hanson said teams in Texas will fly ice baths in helicopters and cool victims in the middle of the desert until the temperature stabilizes before medics even transport them.
However, in Death Valley, getting an ice bath for a victim can be nearly impossible. The weather was so hot, the team couldn’t fly the helicopter. Instead, he carried a body bag and cooled the victim inside with ice and a cold towel as he was transported via ambulance.
Despite the usual emergencies, the park is preventable, and if people follow the park’s instructions, they can experience the heat safely.
“That’s really the reason why some people come — because it’s one of the few places on Earth where you can feel the heat,” said supervising park ranger Jennette Jurado. “It’s our job as park rangers to do our best to make sure people can have that experience and then go home safe in the afternoon and remember that experience.”
Visitors swim in the afternoon in the pool at Furnace Creek, where temperatures stay in the 120s in Death Valley National Park.
For Jurado, a safe visit looks like taking refuge in the air conditioner during the hottest part of the day and experiencing the heat at five-minute intervals. The majority of visitors take this approach. If they were walking, it would be morning, and the car wouldn’t be gone. The rest of the day, they spend hanging in the hotel or at the pool – or leave the park.
Although it is possible for people – wrongly – to convince themselves that the heat wave of 90 degrees in the city does not affect people, it is much harder to do in the heat wave of Death Valley.
Ironically, this makes Jurado even more worried on cold days in the park, when visitors may be least alert. When hikers died on a few days a few years ago, the park’s 105-degree temperatures were unseasonable.
“That’s the level of heat where people are like, ‘Oh, it’s not Death Valley heat, I can go back up — I can take more risks,'” Jurado said.
