Three years ago this week, an unprecedented heat dome settled over the Pacific Northwest. Portland reached 116 degrees Fahrenheit on June 28, 2021, shattering the all-time record by 9 degrees. Across Oregon, 96 people died from heat-related causes in a region where only 44 percent of homes had air conditioning.
Climate models from Oregon State University's Oregon Climate Change Research Institute now project that heat events of comparable magnitude will occur every 6 to 10 years rather than the once-per-millennium return period assumed before 2021. This is not a possibility we can afford to plan for reactively. TerraFuture has spent the past year developing a community-based heat preparedness framework, and we are calling on regional governments to adopt it.
What Went Wrong in 2021
The death toll from the 2021 heat dome was not simply a function of temperature. It was a function of social isolation, inadequate infrastructure, and fragmented emergency response. A Multnomah County after-action analysis revealed several critical failures.
Of the 69 heat-related deaths in Multnomah County, 64 percent occurred among people living alone. Fifty-two percent were age 65 or older. Forty-two percent lived in housing without air conditioning, and many who had window units reported that the units could not maintain safe temperatures during triple-digit heat.
Cooling centers were open, but utilization was low. Portland's 12 designated cooling centers served approximately 2,800 people during the three-day event, a fraction of the estimated 180,000 residents without adequate cooling at home. Transportation to cooling centers was limited, many residents were unaware of their locations, and some centers closed at their normal evening hours despite overnight temperatures remaining above 80 degrees.
A Community-Based Framework
TerraFuture's Heat Preparedness Framework is built on a simple principle: in extreme heat events, the most effective intervention is a human being checking on another human being. Cooling centers and emergency services are necessary but insufficient. What saves lives is the density of social connections in a neighborhood.
Our framework has four components. The first is a Neighbor Network program that recruits, trains, and equips block-level heat response volunteers. Each volunteer is responsible for maintaining contact with 8 to 12 vulnerable neighbors, including people over 65, people with disabilities, people living alone, and people without air conditioning. During heat events, volunteers conduct daily check-ins by phone and in person.
The second component is a cooling access inventory. We have mapped every air-conditioned public and commercial space in Portland, categorized by hours of operation, accessibility features, transit access, and capacity. This inventory, available through our website and a text-message hotline, supplements the city's official cooling center network with libraries, shopping centers, movie theaters, and community centers.
The people who died in the heat dome were not failed by the weather. They were failed by systems that left them invisible. Heat preparedness is not about infrastructure. It is about connection.
Pilot Results
We piloted the Neighbor Network program in four Portland neighborhoods during summer 2023, recruiting 84 volunteers who maintained regular contact with 672 vulnerable residents. During two heat advisories in July and August, with temperatures reaching 103 and 107 degrees respectively, every enrolled individual was contacted within the first 6 hours of each event.
Post-event surveys found that 23 percent of enrolled individuals took protective action specifically because of a volunteer check-in, including relocating to cooled spaces, increasing fluid intake, or contacting medical services. Twelve individuals were connected to emergency cooling assistance, including three portable AC units deployed through our partnership with Multnomah County Emergency Management.
No enrolled individuals required emergency medical transport during either event, compared to 47 heat-related emergency calls from comparable non-enrolled areas.
The Policy Ask
TerraFuture is calling on Multnomah County and the City of Portland to integrate the Neighbor Network model into their official heat emergency response plans and to fund expansion to all high-vulnerability neighborhoods by summer 2025. The estimated cost of a county-wide program serving 8,000 vulnerable residents is 420,000 dollars annually, roughly 52 dollars per person, a fraction of the cost of a single heat-related hospitalization, which averages 18,000 dollars in Multnomah County.
The next heat dome is coming. The only question is whether we will be ready.
