With more than 200 million Americans currently under heat alerts as a potentially historic heat dome blankets the eastern two-thirds of the country heading into the July 4 weekend, a growing body of research makes one thing clear: extreme heat is the most lethal form of extreme weather in the United States — and the federal government has no disaster infrastructure built to fight it.
Heat-related fatalities in the U.S. have nearly doubled over the past 25 years, rising from approximately 1,069 in 1999 to 2,394 in 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, making 2024 the second-deadliest year for heat on record. The previous year was the worst on record: 2,325 deaths, a figure confirmed by a 2024 JAMA study that also found heat deaths were accelerating at 16.8 percent per year between 2016 and 2023. Despite that toll, extreme heat has never received a federal major disaster declaration under the Stafford Act, meaning FEMA cannot deploy its full toolkit — including individual assistance for cooling costs, medical expenses, or housing — even as heat kills more people annually than floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined.
