Adam Ferguson
An American Emergency
Jill Langham, Palm Springs, USA. An American Emergency. August 2021. Jill Langham, 66 and a personal trainer, sits for a portrait at her home in Palm Springs on Jul. 6, 2021. On June 18, Jill Langham and her friend Geoffrey-Martin Cyr planned to have drinks together in the evening. The desert city was experiencing a heat wave: for 43 consecutive days in June and July, temperatures hit 100°F or higher. The soles burned off Langham’s shoes that day, on which the high was 119°F. Cyr planned to lie out near a pool before meeting up. At close to 5 p.m., he texted to say he was “winded” but on his way. He never arrived. Langham didn’t think much of his absence—their plans were casual, and they were due to have brunch that weekend anyway. She later learned Cyr, 55, had collapsed and was transported to a hospital, where he died the next day from complications of heatstroke. “I really wish I had sent him a photo of those [shoes] and said, ‘Hey, be careful out there,’” she says. “Would he have listened? He was a sun worshipper.”Photo by Adam Ferguson for TIME
An American Emergency - Nowhere is the nascent climate crisis more dramatic than in the West, where drought and extreme heat have created life-threatening conditions.
TIME
