Heat-Related Deaths In Maryland Reach 18
BALTIMORE (WJZ)—The record heat wave is over, but the impact is still being felt again. A total of 18 people died in those sweltering conditions.
Mike Hellgren has new information from state health officials.
Those numbers could go up as the Medical Examiner completes more autopsies. Seven of those who died lived in Baltimore City, three in Baltimore County, and most of them were elderly men.
The heat wave is history, fueling storms that left hundreds of thousands without power and killing a stunning 18 people in Maryland.
"The humidity is up, but the temperature is down," said Robert Nicholson Jr.
Way down.
But before the record heat left, it buckled pavement, including part of U.S. 50 and train tracks. It even left an US Airways jet stuck, sunk into soft pavement.
"Pure hell. Really it's been awful," said Shirley Smith.
But on Monday, "It's heaven. I love it. I love it," she said.
"We can walk up to the snowball stand today, and it's just pleasant out," said Stephanie Brown.
"I turned off my air conditioner to save on that electric bill," said Betty Young.
But with the cool front came storms that knocked out another 15,000 BGE customers.
"Heard that big bang, transformer blew, wire fell down," said John Carter.
The utility restored most of them.
BGE has three weeks to issue a full report to the Public Service Commission on the main outages last week.
That commission will likely hold hearings on the utility's overall response.
Maryland health officials are also evaluating how well they handled the heat wave.
"We will actually be looking very closely looking at the messages that went out, at our response as a state, at our response as an agency. We'll be looking at that internally. We'll be looking at that across the state," said Dr. Clifford Mitchell, Maryland Department of Health.
That buckled section of U.S. 50 is between the Anne Arundel County and D.C. line. Work will continue there overnight.
As for power outages, nearly 2,000 BGE customers remain without electricity.
