It’s been getting much, much hotter; that is a truth that many Southern Californians feel everyday.
Though summer has ended, the heat persists well into the fall season, bringing with it a particularly brutal heatwave that gripped L.A. County from Oct. 2 to Oct. 9 where temperatures reached over 100 degrees. The extreme heat warnings seem to be becoming more frequent. The heatwaves are growing in intensity.
As students and faculty of Citrus are forced to endure this heat they must reconcile with the impact that it’s been having on them.
Take student athletes, for instance. Alan Waddington, who’s been coaching the Citrus Cross Country team for over 18 years, has seen what the heat can do to his runners. He said that during times where they had to run extensively in temperatures over 80 degrees they were “miserable” and “uncomfortable.”
Cross country is physically demanding. It’s meant to be difficult, he said, and the weather will always be a part of that difficulty. The heat especially poses an issue for them.
“There have been races in the past where it’s been really, really hot and I worry about it,” he said.
Waddington said that he has seen runners from different schools passing out from the heat, warranting the presence of paramedics at their races. As a result, he’s moved practice to the mornings to avoid hot temperatures and general fatigue among his students.
Citrus’s student athletes aren’t the only ones who find themselves affected by the intense heat. The work that students in the Automotive Technology Program do requires them to labor through hot temperatures during the day too.
Priscilla Englert, who teaches the Engine Repair and Diagnosis class, said that the climate control in their shops is inadequate, and as a result her students are left more vulnerable to the weather outside.
“[The heat] is always a challenge because … our lab environment is not centrally air-conditioned,” she said.
The lack of air-conditioning makes the heat more unavoidable, especially when they have to leave their doors open to accommodate their running engines. Additional heat caused by emissions from their vehicles only contributes to the hotness that can be felt in their work space.
Because of this students are heavily encouraged to stay hydrated throughout the day. They also have to rely on the wind from outside to find relief when they keep their roll-up doors open.
To make up for the lack of air conditioning, each workspace is provided with an evaporative cooling fan.
“It does save us sometimes,” said Automotive Technology major Mathew Chavez.
“Like when we’re feeling really hot, we just take a break in front of there. And it’s pretty nice.”
Their range, however, is limited. And because of their size and the floor space that the class requires for their equipment, only one fan can fit into a room at once.
Some students are lucky enough to be at a place where the air can reach them, but others are not.
“Typically the students are confined to an area where they have to be right next to their engines or components and tools, and if that is not in proximity to one of the swamp coolers, then they are going to be the ones that are going to be most affected by the heat,” Englert said.
Students have a few other ways to deal with the heat, such as vending machines where they can buy drinks and permission to take a break in front of the big evaporative fan.
Chavez said that because of these options — the fan especially — the heat “isn’t too bad.”
“It does get pretty hot though,” Chavez said.
“If there’s a situation where all of the cars are running, a lot more heat is generated that way, and you could feel the difference.”
Heatwaves can be particularly brutal.
“I mean, October is starting off with almost like 100 degrees. That’s insane. And we feel it in the shop,” Chavez said.
All week long, Englert’s class was made to adjust to the intensity of the weather as it overwhelmed her and her students.
“These past couple of heat wave days, I’ve kept the lab rollup doors closed because as soon as I opened them, just the radiation from the sun alone was coming in very strong and it was hotter to keep them open rather than to keep them closed,” she said.
The heat can affect not only students, but Citrus faculty as well. Englert said that it’s very difficult for the teachers to take any kind of break, even when they’re just leaving their students to cool off in an air-conditioned room for a couple of minutes.
But when she sees her students physically sweating and overheating, she makes sure to grant them that privilege. She tells them that they can take breaks “so that their body temperature starts to cool down a little bit before they go back into the lab.”
She understands that the heat is exhausting.
“It will fatigue you,” she said.
Englert said that she’s had students come up to her and complain about the heat.
“And I agree with them. It is very, very hot. [ But ] we still have to get our labs completed and work in this lab space. We just do the best we can to make sure that they’re safe,” she said.
With the noticeable rise in temperature, and with it having no foreseeable end given the trajectory of climate change, Englert expressed concerns about the coming future.
“If it continues and it gets hotter and hotter, it’d be a disservice to our students and faculty and staff to have them deal with this type of heat because then it becomes a hazardous work environment.”
She said that they can benefit from having climate control in their workspace.
“I know there are opportunities there to improve the buildings for our students, faculty and staff. There’s always an opportunity to make things better,” she said.
Chavez said that if there was a way to improve climate control in their shops then he thinks that everyone would really appreciate it, potentially through implementing extra fans because of the open space their work requires. He knows that these improvements would be hard to maintain, but more airflow and constant wind would make the shop easier to work in.
He said that having AC in the shops would be really nice too.
“I never thought about having AC in a shop like that,” he said.
“I just don’t know how it would work. It’d be really cool though.”
Englert said that she and the faculty have had ideas for how the heat can be made more manageable for them, mainly the possible addition of larger fans to their lab space or even a ceiling fan that can provide airflow from overhead.
“If a complete climate controlled environment is not feasible, there are other options out there that we can definitely work with administration,” she said.
It is apparent to the people of Citrus that California has been getting hotter, and that it won’t stop anytime soon, which can be attributed to climate change.
Scientific consensus says that the human-made greenhouse gasses and carbon emissions that are accumulating in the air have been warming up the earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere.
This, consequentially, causes a steady increase in temperature that makes each year hotter than the last. It also contributes to the unusual heat that the Californian coast has been facing during autumn, and the heatwaves and wildfires that have been afflicting LA County with increased intensity.
“Never in my lifetime have I experienced this type of heat for this long during this time of year. I’m sure it’s broken records and I don’t see it getting any better.” Englert said.
