LAS VEGAS, Nev. (FOX5) – Community members are coming together to ensure workers understand their rights as an extreme heat warning in Southern Nevada continues.
Wednesday night a Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition hosted an informational meeting for “heat week” with the goal of educating workers on new protections they’re entitled to. They were also working to strategize what more can be done to protect everyone.
“We’re always exposed to the heat. We would go step outside, go from cold to hot and that’s a shock on the body. Anytime you get a shock like that, you get dizzy, you might fall out, collapse, stuff like that,” explained Tollis Hill, a former casino security guard for 15 years.
“In the garages, out in front of the hotel… we’re actually out there like 120 degrees plus,” Hill recounted.
Hill says heat exhaustion seemed to just be part of the job.
“We didn’t have the protections that we needed where we were going inside to have water, being able to carry like something simple like CamelBak, so that way we could have water because that was against our regulation,” Hill revealed.
This summer, new Nevada OSHA regulations guarantee workers more protections that even before from extreme heat. Businesses with more than 10 employees are required to perform a job hazard analysis and if there’s danger of heat illness, provide water and breaks when an employee shows signs of sickness and have a way to cool them down.
“Extreme heat is a silent killer that does not impact all of us equally,” contended Jackie Spicer, Coalition Coordinator with the Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition.
“Nevada has two of the fastest warming cities in the country: Reno being #1, Las Vegas being #2,” reported Cinthia Moore, Assemblymember, District 11.
This legislative session, state lawmakers also approved a new law mandating Nevada employers protect employees from wildfire smoke. Another law mandating Clark and Washoe Counties come up with master plans to mitigate the impact of extreme heat on its most vulnerable residents like Mary Wagner’s son whose suffers from asthma.
“Every time that heat gets worse, that means that his conditions get worse. So as a mother, I am very worried about what the future looks like for him,” shared Wagner.
Wagner told FOX5 sometimes she has to make the choice of whether to buy her son his inhaler or pay the electric bill to keep the air conditioning on.
As for workers, Nevada is one of the only states that has state level OSHA standards for extreme heat protections’. Though we live in the desert, heat is deadly and needs to be taken seriously.
More than 500 people died in Clark County from heat-related illnesses last year alone. Each year, extreme heat claims more lives in the US than hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes combined.
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