Editor’s note: This story mentions sexual assault.
Five years ago, B.C. experienced the 2021 heat dome, the deadliest weather event in its history.
It lasted from June 25 to July 1, 2021. The hottest day was on June 28, 2021: Pitt Meadows hit 41.4°C, Vancouver International 31.7°C, West Vancouver 39.2ºC, and White Rock 38.5ºC. In Lytton, the temperature hit an all-time Canadian temperature record of 49.6ºC. Nighttime temperatures remained high throughout the heat dome.
According to scientists from the World Weather Attribution, it would have been “virtually impossible without human-caused climate change.” It was a mass of warm air and a ridge of high atmospheric pressure over one area. That high pressure pushed the warm air down into the atmosphere, and as it compressed towards the earth’s surface, it got even hotter. Meanwhile, other weather systems actually moved around the dome while it stayed in place.
Bobby Sekhon is a warning preparedness meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC). Back in 2021, he said that they started to pick up the signals about the dome a week to 10 days beforehand.
“When we saw forecasted temperatures of 45 to 50 degrees in some southwest interior locations, we kind of questioned whether this could be real or not, because it was something we had never seen before,” he said.
On June 22, 2021, ECCC issued a weather notification to let their emergency management and health partners know that they should start planning. The next day, on June 23, they issued heat warnings to the general public.
“We had the certainty that this is going to be something that could be hazardous to our health, and that we need to prepare ahead of it,” Sekhon said.
But B.C. wasn’t prepared for this extreme heat, because the province had never dealt with it before on this scale. Hundreds of people lost their lives.
The impact
According to a report from the British Columbia Coroners Service, 619 people died due to heat-related causes. The people most at risk were older adults, people with certain chronic diseases, people who lived alone, people without cooling in their homes, and people who lived in “socially or materially deprived neighbourhoods.” Ninety-eight per cent of the deaths happened indoors.
“We can think about the people who fell through the cracks during the heat dome, but the fact is that they fell through the cracks years before that,” said Andréanne Doyan, a resource and environmental management professor at SFU.
Vancouver was the city hardest hit, with 117 of those deaths occurring within its city limits.
One of those people was Dolores Spagnolo. She was 64 years old.
Spagnolo was a royal conservatory piano player, a classically trained opera singer, a long-time resident of Vancouver, and a Nona, said Katharine Olsen, her daughter.
“She was a lot of things, but at the time that she died — it was still during the pandemic, she was living on disability support, she struggled with a lot of significant vulnerabilities, fibromyalgia, mental health issues, bipolar, depression, all sorts of things.”
Prior to the heat dome, Spagnolo had been recently discharged from St. Paul’s Hospital. She was under daily ministry check-ins and medication delivery. She had been on disability for decades. She was living in a small apartment at the time, overlooking Central Park in Burnaby on the Vancouver side of Boundary Road.
On Spagnolo’s coroner’s report, it states her cause of death.
“Spagnolo died on June 29, 2021, at which time British Columbia was experiencing an unprecedented excessive heat wave. Excessive environmental heat compounded existing medical conditions, causing their death.”
Olsen said that the heat “happened to be the thing.”
“It was just the poverty and all the conditions that consistently and predictably led to her being in that vulnerable position,” she said.
Dolores Spagnolo with her children
Two days after Spagnolo died, Olsen and her brother went to pack up their mother’s apartment.
“We were in the tiny apartment, clearing out her stuff in 30-degree heat, and it was the most awful day. I was finding all these emotional bombs all over the place, while sweating buckets, and just openly bawling my eyes out.”
They found three new fans that were boxed up, unused.
“Which told me that, sure, she was under the daily care of the ministry, but no one cared; they didn’t have the capacity,” Olsen said.
Since Spagnolo had moved a lot throughout her life, Olsen found what she had chosen to keep at the end “incredibly meaningful.”
“So to see the polaroids of my son and letters that I had sent her,” said Olsen, her voice choking up. “And finding court documents.”
Spagnolo had been sexually assaulted by her father when she was young. Later, after she and her husband (Olsen’s father) divorced, and he got custody of the children, Spagnolo sued her parents.
“Her father for assaulting her, and her mother for not protecting her. And it was settled out of court and closed, but she kept those court-stamped documents for decades, I think, just to prove to herself that she wasn’t crazy,” said Olsen.
Olsen acknowledged that Spagnolo was “a hard woman to have as a mother.”
“I tried. I gave her so much money, I paid for Meals on Wheels for years, when I could. I don’t know how many times I helped box up apartments and move her to the next one — like, countless times, countless,” she said.
“But to see that she’s literally under the ministry care — people who are being paid to come there every day, and to know the heat domes are coming, and to have found three fans that were like all not even taken out of the boxes or plugged in. And this is a woman who couldn’t really even get up off the couch at this point.”
Olsen, who is a single mother, said she was going through a divorce at the time. It was during the pandemic. She was working full-time, managing a full strata portfolio.
“I couldn’t do all those things for her; I needed the community and the supports to be those things for her. And the world just honestly let her down over and over and over.”
Olsen said the days and weeks after Spagnolo’s death were “a horrifying experience.”
“I went through the emails this week, because I remember waiting and waiting and following up and frustrations and sadness, and when I looked at it now, like this week, I was like, ‘Oh God, that was even worse than I remember,'” she said.
It wasn’t until July 24, 2021, that Spagnolo was transferred out of the BC Coroners Service. While Spagnolo’s family already had a space for her at Ocean View on Boundary Road, they didn’t get the contract until Sept. 2, 2021. It was another two weeks to inter her, and four more to get a plaque.
And it wasn’t until July 2022 that they got the report on the death from the BC Coroners Service.
“As her daughter, as someone who believes that humans owe each other a modicum of dignity, I’ve seen none of that. And it was really hard to see her life. That, to me, deserves so much more celebration, just end with the same amount of tragedy that the last part of her life did,” said Olsen.
But she added that she isn’t pointing out any single service, noting that they were all completely overwhelmed.
Daily Hive interviewed a spokesperson from the BC Coroners Service and asked them about the delays.
“We can definitely say that the system was overwhelmed by the amount of people who are in distress from the heat,” said Holly Tally, the manager of strategic communications and media relations for the BC Coroners Service.
During the peak of the heat dome, 911 calls doubled. The median time for paramedics to attend to 54 per cent of deaths was 10 minutes and 25 seconds. In 17 instances, 911 callers were placed on hold for an extended period of time.
Normally, if someone dies of a natural death (a disease of the body), it doesn’t warrant an investigation by the BC Coroners Service. But after the heat dome, Tally said that their chief coroner said that if a doctor felt that someone could have lived except for the heat dome, then they should refer them to the Coroners Service for an investigation, even if they had a pre-existing condition like diabetes.
“That’s a huge spike in investigating deaths in a number of days. We don’t deal with that number of deaths in three or four days,” said Tally.
Living through the heat dome with a disability
Patricia (who asked to keep her last name anonymous) was living in the West End during the heat dome, on Alberni and Denman. She was in a 1990s concrete high-rise, and she said she almost died. At the time, she was 38 years old.
While the West End has a fairly good urban tree canopy compared to other parts of the city (which is known to reduce temperatures), she said that a new tower was under construction next to her building, with a “super ultra reflective aluminum white cladding” that reflected the heat.
Patricia was a renter who lived alone, her husband having passed away in January 2020. She also contracted COVID-19 in November 2020, which caused her to have disabilities, including heart conditions and respiratory issues, which means that heat stresses her body more than it otherwise would.
“Your heart and lungs have to work harder,” she said.
Like many, she didn’t have air conditioning. Further, her building’s central HVAC wasn’t working properly, which meant that there wasn’t the normal airflow through the hallways and into the units.
During the heat dome, she pulled down her blinds and turned on fans, but she said the temperature in her apartment still skyrocketed. Patricia went out to a nearby park to find respite, but found that people were smoking cannabis or vaping, which aggravated her asthma. When she went to the mall to cool down, the scents from stores like Saje Wellness and Lush continued to aggravate her.
EJ Nickerson/Shutterstock
“I had nowhere safe to go that wasn’t either smoky or full of perfume. Or it was just too hot to live.”
Patricia said she got severe heat exhaustion. Over the phone, her mom told her to take herself to the hospital in a taxi, having heard about long ambulance wait times. Before getting in the taxi, she used an emergency inhaler. During the car ride, she stuck her head out the window to avoid breathing in the air freshener in the vehicle.
Once at the hospital, she was hooked up to a saline IV and recalls waiting for several hours. It was air-conditioned, but she was trying to avoid the fragrances coming from other people.
“By the time I saw a doctor several hours later, they were like, ‘Oh, well, your temperature is okay now.’ So they just told me to go home,” she said.
At home, Patricia lay on her living room floor to try to keep cool.
“I would just have some ice packs in the freezer and then some on my body, and I would just rotate them out. And drink water,” she said.
After the heat dome
Patricia has since moved to another West End high-rise, where she was able to purchase a condo. While she was searching for her new home, she factored in climate change and future heat domes.
She said her previous apartment had a “very bad strata that was not really maintaining the building,” so she prioritized finding a proactive strata and good management. It also had only two windows that opened, which didn’t allow for optimal airflow. Her new place has four windows that open, and it also has designs that help it stay cooler, like a fountain that recirculates water so it doesn’t have to shut down during water restrictions.
Patricia got strata approval for an AC unit, since she has disabilities. She packed her specialized (and expensive) blinds from her previous apartment, which were lined with a mylar, a foil that can block the heat from the sun.
She acknowledged that she has resources that many might not have — like being able to buy a condo, specialized blinds, and a portable AC.
“Not everyone can do that,” she said.
Prior to contracting COVID-19, she had lived in hot countries like the Gambia and South Korea. She was always able to manage the heat.
“It wasn’t until I became disabled that I realized just how dangerous it is for people, and just how differently people experience heat.”
Dr. Bonnie Henry, the provincial health officer, repeated this sentiment in a statement she sent out regarding the fifth anniversary of the heat dome.
“Heat events do not impact everyone equally. People living in poverty, individuals with mental illness and those with chronic health conditions often face higher risks when they lack access to a cool indoor space. For people who are susceptible to heat, sustained indoor temperatures over 26°C can pose a risk to health, and sustained temperatures over 31°C can be dangerous,” she said.
Community connection
On the morning of June 29, 2021, Alex Russell and her former partner were getting their kids ready for the last day of school in their home in East Vancouver, when one of their neighbours came to their door, panicked. There was a language barrier between them, but Russell said it was clear that something was wrong and that another neighbour needed help.
She and her former partner went to this neighbour’s home, where they found him unresponsive. They called 911. Russell delivered a couple of doses of naloxone as a precaution.
“I did everything I could do while waiting for 911,” she said.
Russell recalled that it took over 10 minutes to reach the dispatcher — a wait time she had never experienced before.
She said the paramedics pronounced him deceased shortly after they arrived, and said he likely had been for some time.
The paramedics stayed there until the police arrived, and the police stayed until the coroner arrived in the late evening. The whole process took hours, with the coroner leaving after 9 p.m.
“The emergency and public services were overwhelmed by this unprecedented event,” said Russell. “And I think every emergency responder, from the 911 call taker to the paramedics, to the police, to the coroner — everyone did the best they could.”
Russell said she had known this neighbour, who was relatively young, for a couple of years, and they would have “friendly over the fence kind of talk once in a while.”
“He was very lovely, very quiet, kept to himself, respectful.”
Prior to the heat dome, she said she had been concerned about him. It was 2021, still in the height of COVID-19, and she was aware that he had been seeking help and had a sense that he needed support.
“During the pandemic, he had experienced many significant life stressors, a layoff, the loss of a relationship, the loss of a family member, and on top of that, there was a lot of social isolation and loneliness,” she said.
“We also know that during the pandemic, there were documented increased mental health challenges during and following, and we all know that grief, disconnection, and loss affects people differently, and the more socially isolated you are, the more medically vulnerable you are, the more vulnerable you are with mental health,” Russell said.
“Some individuals emerged from that period with fewer supports and diminished coping capacity, and so my neighbour’s circumstances reflected how multiple vulnerabilities can intersect and compound.”
The heat dome made Russell’s realize how things like isolation and vulnerabilities can compound during emergencies, and that community connection “can be a very important protective factor during extreme events.”
“This was somebody who slipped through the cracks, and shouldn’t have,” Russell said. “The heat dome wasn’t just an extreme weather event; it was an event that resulted in human tragedy. It was one of those moments when a crisis that many people experienced through the news became very real on a personal level, at a community level.”
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