When British Columbia saw record-breaking temperatures during the 2021 heat dome, Stephen Nelson witnessed firsthand just how quickly those temperatures can turn deadly.
Nelson was living at the Keefer Rooms in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) when his friend and neighbour, Mario, began "suffering from the heat," Nelson told What on Earth.
Mario had difficulty taking care of himself, Nelson said, so he and his girlfriend tried to help as temperatures soared. They opened the windows and turned on a fan in Mario's room to try to bring the temperature down. Meanwhile, they looked after him in Nelson's room and made sure he had plenty of water.
"He started feeling better so I put him back in his room and I went to sleep. I woke up and I just had this bad feeling that nobody checked on him, and sure enough, I went next door and he was dead where I put him down to watch TV."
A coroner's report provided to CBC by the B.C. Coroners Service confirmed Mario died during the heat wave after extreme heat compounded existing medical conditions.
BCCS also said it "does not have any files on anyone else dying at the Keefer Rooms during that timeframe."
The Keefer Rooms is one of roughly 100 single-room occupancy buildings, or SROs, in Vancouver, where tenants typically live in small rooms and share bathrooms.
The extreme heat crisis killed 619 people. A report from a panel convened by the B.C. Coroners Service (BCCS) found that 10 per cent of those deaths occurred in social housing, including SROs.
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But the crisis also spurred SRO tenants and their neighbours to action, bringing them together to document temperatures and find ways to stay safe when temperatures spike.
Wendy Pedersen founded the Downtown Eastside SRO Collaborative Society, which works to improve conditions for tenants.
Pedersen said teams of tenants now work in about 30 SRO buildings, including "H2O teams" — heat and hydration organizers who check on neighbours and deliver bottled water during heat waves.
The organization has also helped tenants open cooling rooms in two SRO buildings and secured funding from Vancouver city council to open six more, Pedersen said.
One opened last month in a building called the Main Rooms.
Roger Haskins is one of the tenants who helped the SRO Collaborative monitor temperatures in the building last summer.
