So can heat. You see news stories both ways, usually involving people who are are either too elderly and/or mentally impaired to sense that they are in danger and need to take action to care for themselves. A few years ago, there was an elderly man in Michigan who died of hypothermia when his electricity was shut off in winter due to non-payment of his bill. (Authorities then found he had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away, so it wasn't that he couldn't afford to pay. I'm sure he just got confused and didn't know what to do. I recall this story because this was about the time my mother started having dementia and she forgot to pay the utility bills on her rental. The power got cut-off, in a very cold January, and I had to scramble to pay the bill and get power restored. I used the man's death as an example in a letter to my state utilities commission of the greed of monopoly utility companies, such that they will cut off power and this can result in someone's death, rather than wondering why someone who always paid their bill suddenly did not and at a time when lack of power meant life vs. death. Sorry . . tangent).
I will give you this: You don't hear of people in your area who die from hypothermia, but up north you do see stories both ways . . people in Chicago or Detroit who die from excessive heat as well as cold. It gets life-threateningly cold and hot up here, whereas you just have the heat to contend with . . and likely everyone there has air conditioning because it would be harder to live without it there. |