People have been rushed to the emergency rooms of Maricopa County, Arizona, throughout July, with life-threatening burns caused by the ongoing heat wave plaguing the U.S.
Some patients are being brought in after falling on the ground and being burned by the searing-hot temperatures, according to CNN. “Summers are our busy season, so we anticipate that this sort of thing is going to happen. But this is really unusual — the number of patients that we’re seeing and the severity of injuries — the acuity of injuries is much higher,” Arizona Burn Center doctor Kevin Foster told the outlet.
“The numbers are higher and the seriousness of injuries are higher, and we don’t have a good explanation for it,” he noted. Within the burn center, all 45 beds are full, and a third of patients are those who burned themselves by just falling to the ground. Many of these patients are in the institution’s intensive care unit.
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“The temperature of asphalt and pavement and concrete and sidewalks in Arizona on a warm sunny day or summer afternoon is 180 degrees sometimes. I mean, it’s just a little below boiling, so it’s really something,” Foster continued. He noted that it can barely take a second to get a fairly serious burn from a sidewalk.
Folks who fall and remain on the ground for 1o or 20 minutes will likely be “completely destroyed” by deep damage, CNN noted. (RELATED: ‘Extremely Dangerous And Long-Duration’ Catastrophe Hits The Southwest, NWS Says)
Scorching-hot weather is expected to last through the summer throughout the southern U.S., particularly in the West, according to the National Weather Service. Critical fire risks are in place within the interior Northwest as a heat dome continues to develop throughout the rest of the world, WFLA-TV meteorologist Jeff Berardelli tweeted.