Effect On The Environment
As many as 5,000 heat related deaths were reported. Many people suffered from heat stroke and heat exhaustion, particularly the elderly. Unlike today, air conditioning was in the early stages of development and was therefore absent from houses and commercial buildings. Many of the deaths occurred in high population density areas of Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Toronto and other urban areas. Farmers across the continent saw crop failure, causing corn and wheat prices to rise quickly. Droughts and heat waves were common in the 1930s. The 1930s are remembered as the driest and warmest decade for the US (the Dust Bowl years) and the summer of 1936 was the most widespread and destructive heat wave to occur in the Americas in centuries.
Read more about this topic: 1936 North American Heat Wave
Famous quotes containing the words effect on, effect and/or environment:
“Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them—as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“The attention of those who frequent the camp-meetings at Eastham is said to be divided between the preaching of the Methodists and the preaching of the billows on the back side of the Cape, for they all stream over here in the course of their stay. I trust that in this case the loudest voice carries it. With what effect may we suppose the ocean to say, “My hearers!” to the multitude on the bank. On that side some John N. Maffit; on this, the Reverend Poluphloisboios Thalassa.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“White males are the most responsible for the destruction of human life and environment on the planet today.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)