Too Much Sun in the Sunbelt

Record-breaking heat wave grips the Southwest

Wichita Falls, 117DEG. Dallas, 113DEG. Little Rock, 105DEG. Oklahoma City, 105DEG.

Though the Southwestern U.S. is accustomed to sizzling summers, temperatures last week topped 100DEG day after day in Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma, breaking records up to 100 years old. Some 145 people, most of them elderly, died of heat complications; Texas alone had 78 deaths.

Tempers shortened and productivity fell. In Houston, where 92% of the buildings are air-conditioned, the demand for electricity reached record heights. In Dallas a woman walked up to a truck loaded with ice and, without a word to the driver, climbed in and lay down on the cargo. Many businessmen gave up wearing suit coats and switched to guayaberas--loose-fitting, Mexican-style shirts. At Fort Chaffee, Ark., trucks carried ice water to the military policemen assigned to the Cuban refugee camps. Even so, a dozen MPs became ill. (None of the Cubans, used to heat, were hospitalized.)

In Arkansas, one of the nation's leading poultry-raising states, more than 2.5 million chickens died. Poultrymen hosed down the coops and walked through them day and night, stirring up the chickens so that they would move about and be less likely to suffocate. In Texas the cotton crop--biggest in the state--was suffering, and so were fields of grain, sorghum and soybeans. The ominous forecast for this week: more hot weather.

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