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Fall started last week, but it still feels like summer break to students like Catherine Munoz.
That is why she left school early Tuesday to swim at the Expo Center pool with her family.
“It’s hot, and you can’t stand the hotness right now,” Munoz said. “I came over here to cool off.”
She is one of many Angelenos finding creative ways to keep cool.
At the air-conditioned senior center next door, the exercise class is almost full. Mary L. Patterson is sipping coffee and chatting with friends while she waits for yoga practice to start.
She said she is glad for the refuge of the center, which she described as “a pleasant place.” She is trying to stay out of her house all day.
“If I had to go back home right now, I’d drive slowly, and I’d get there and just open my windows,” Patterson said. “I have air conditioning, but with the expense of the electric bill, I cool off that way.”
The pool and senior center are two of a number of public “cooling stations” offered across the city and county. Libraries and parks are also listed.
But tight finances mean that many places were not open in the morning, even as temperatures soared.
“Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, we’re opening our doors a little bit later, in the middle of the day,” said M’liss Causey, the director of the Hoover Recreation Center on 25th Street, near Adams Boulevard.
Causey said the park staff did not get any guidance on how to help the hundreds of visitors who come looking for shade, especially in the afternoon. Instead, they came up with their own plan.
“We found ourselves walking around offering anyone standing around a cup of ice water,” Causey said. “And the excitement that we received from people was just incredible. Everyone took one. People would stop by on bicycles, grab a cup and keep going. We’ll keep doing it every day if we have to until the heat can kind of die down.”
Michael Wilson, the spokesperson for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, said Los Angeles is generally weathering the sun well. Hospitals have seen only tiny increases in heat-related illness, he said.
Long-time residents like Gussie Edmondson said that they only cope well because they have already learned to cope.
“If it’s hot weather, I deal with hot weather,” Edmondson said with a shrug as she left the cool shelter of the senior center. “If it’s cold weather, I deal, because I have no control over it. So I have to adjust to the weather, not the weather adjusting to me.”
