“Be smart and respect the heat. It's no joke, especially at this level,” Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist and Climate Matters director, tells Inside Edition Digital.
The widow of the 71-year-old experienced California hiker who died after collapsing in 121-degree heat last week has a warning for other so called "heat tourists."
Rima Curry is still reeling from the death of her beloved husband, Steve, and told Inside Edition that anyone who wants to venture in the high heat of places like Death Valley is "a foolhardy idea, 100 percent.”
'If I knew he was going I would have told him not to, I would have pulled him back, don't do it,” she added.
She said that her husband, an avid outdoorsman, would disappear for days on end to explore the national parks near their home in Los Angeles, California, and Death Valley was on his bucket list.
Photos taken the day he died by an L.A. Times photographer depict Steve looking prepared, with his face caked with maximum-protection zinc sun screen.
According to the photographer, Steve had hiked for two hours into the park and was resting under a metal sign, the only shelter available before attempting to hike back out.
Steve’s widow says that she doesn’t “understand” why he declined help from others in the area who saw him that day.
“He might have been there saying, ‘I’ve only got this much to do, I’m going to do it,’” she told Inside Edition. “That's the only thing that makes sense to me because he wasn't stupid.”
A family friend of the couple has set up a GoFundMe account to help Rima pay for expenses.
Some younger hikers Jessica Rhodes, 34, and Diana Matienzo, 29, died during the historic heatwave Saturday while hiking in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada where the mercury soared north of 100 degrees. A sign at the park warns hiking in “Hot Weather Is Dangerous And Not Recommended.”
Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist and Climate Matters director, tells Inside Edition Digital that “it's not necessarily a bad idea to visit Death Valley in a heat wave, but any visit must be taken responsibly with serious attention to and precautions around the extreme heat.”
She gave examples on what can help in the extreme heat like “severely limiting any outdoor time and isolating it to the very early or late evening hours, around the peak heat, making sure that you always travel with plenty of water and hydrating drinks.”
“Heat is our leading weather killer, but it's also one of the most preventable. It's well forecast. We know the precautions that we need to take — even though the solutions are not always equitably available for all people, in all living and working situations. Sadly, the effects slow your ability to reason and respond, so it catches too many people,” she says.
While it has been reported that many are flocking to Death Valley and other extreme-heat areas for social media posts, she said that anyone going, even the most healthy person, needs to be responsible.
“Anyone spending any time outside in this extreme heat will feel the impact fast, and that threat amplifies big time in exposed sunshine — even for a healthy, well-hydrated person,” Woods Placky says. “Anyone with additional health risks will be pushing the already challenging conditions — meaning that they will feel the impacts even faster, and worse. It's a real risk that needs to be thought through responsibly.”
“Be smart and respect the heat. It's no joke, especially at this level,” she emphasizes.
Woods Placky says that Death Valley only gets hotter as climate change continues to rear its ugly head but adds “not every heat wave or every summer will necessarily be hotter than the previous one, but overall, the heat will continue to push to new levels over time unless we drastically reduce our carbon pollution —primarily from the burning of gas, oil, and coal — quickly.”
She did say that there is good news, explaining “we can make those changes through a range of climate solutions, and that would limit our future warming.”
While the heat has been extreme, many have been applying sunscreen and while that helps to not get severe burns. Woods Placky explains “sunscreen isn't directly connected to temperature. It's connected to UV light from the sun. So the amount of sunscreen needed depends on sun exposure [such as] length, proximity to the equator, elevation. For example, a lot of sunscreen is needed even during cold ski days in the Rockies.”
