A specially bad storm that ultimately persuaded Judy Reiber that she needed to leave Colorado hangs on Judy Reiber’s home wall. The Nevada heat would kill her, she did n’t realize until then.
Reiber is just one of at least 402 people who have passed away this summer from heat-related ailments. This is Las Vegas’s deadliest steam year ever since the sheriff’s office started determining heat as a cause of death in 2021.
” Heat is a killer”, her father, Tim Reiber, said in an interview. ” You do n’t get enough fluids one morning, and you’re out in the heat — I do n’t care what your age is — it could be your last day”.
It is also a serious distress. According to data obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada experienced the most heat-related emergency room trips since the condition began recording them in 2020. There were 4, 014 of them, according to preliminary data, which is nearly a 42 % increase over the period from 2023.
More than 400 people lost their lives in the summer heat, and some of them were killed by their ages, drug use, or absence of cover. Some seem predicted because of danger elements, and others seem strange and foolish.
However, they all share the same conviction: Desert temperature was neither their primary cause of death or a contributing factor.
According to Clark County Coroner Melanie Rouse,” Heat disease is a spectrum of body dysfunction.”
At 79, Judy Reiber was good, save a match of breast cancer in 2002 that she had overcome.
She was primarily retired, but she still provided nursing care for the most prone at the Nathan Adelson Hospice.
On her west Henderson deck, she spent each day relaxing and enjoying herself. In honor of her upbringing in Florida, her apartment, which she shared with her second husband, was taken out of a tropical card.
” It’s a Florida woman thing”, Tim Reiber said. ” Florida women love to sunbathe”.
According to Dr. Ketan Patel of the University Medical Center’s emergency office, time is one of the risk factors for heat-related incidents. As people get older, their systems are less resilient to extreme temperature, he said. They might also be taking prescribed medications that have this effect or have underlying conditions.
On a Thursday morning when Tim Reiber, the prospect cook at MGM Grand on the Strip, came home from his evening change, he kissed Judy in a way he now recalls as more special. He could not hear her bathtub running in the other chamber when he awoke days later.
He ran around and dialed 911 after noticing her burned body lying flat on the ground. He performed CPR until he heard his wife’s bones hole, but there were still glimmers of hope in the midst of the chaos.
Finally, the truth set in: His wife of almost 30 times was gone.
In the fast fallout of losing his partner, when police authorities arrived, Tim Reiber was a murder suspect. How could a woman who is otherwise good suddenly vanish? Eight weeks after, the coroner’s report revealed that he had been a victim of the ominous desert temperature, which had purged him.
” What can you do? Someone had to go initially”, Tim Reiber said through grief. ” Now I know why so many men die first, because you do n’t want to be left”.
According to the examination report, June 6 was one of the hottest days of the summer, which would cause temperatures to rise while deaths from heat-related causes may rise to 113 degrees. Climate change , increased the likelihood , of that day’s normal temperature fourfold, according to scientific communications company Climate Central.
Heat a lethal challenge for poor, to
Nighttime offered no respite from the oppressing warmth of the day this summers. When comparing two 30-year phases of wind statistics, the number of excessively hot times in Las Vegas has grown 179 percent — the most of any of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country, according to , a New York Times analysis , of National Weather Service information.
In June and July, every day except for seven hovered above 79 degrees. July dealt Las Vegas some nights that did n’t dip below 94 degrees. In a” town that never sleeps”, as Patel put it, that’s a problem for people constantly out in the summer.
It’s a concerning trend to specialists and representatives everywhere, especially for the state’s homeless population, which grew 20 percentage from 2023 to 2024, according to a point-in-time survey conducted by referral organizations.
” There’s no relief”, Patel said. You simply ca n’t avoid or get a complete break from it.
The poor inhabitants is disproportionately affected by the warmth because they have little (or, if they are lucky, a camp ) to stand in between the scorching sunlight and everything. At least 62 poor people were reported to have died in 2023 from temperature alone, said Louis Lacey, chairman of HELP of Southern Nevada. Some people got severe injuries and burn on the road.
While providing water and providing solutions to those on the streets, Lacey said,” The heat is amazing.” ” I’ve never seen it this warm, and I’ve been here since 1972. It’s been popular, indeed, but something on this scale, no”.
Diane Schryver, 65, had been surviving on the roads of Las Vegas for years. She was killed in August’s warm day. After a week-long checkup for a head injury, Schuryver was discharged from Valley Hospital Medical Center on August 5. To get to a local house, she was given a bus ticket by the hospital.
Confused and wandering the streets, she died two days later.
” She was a darling, but she was headstrong”, her girl Sallie Schryver said. ” She often tried to do great by everyone”.
As the two sisters ‘ life advanced, Sallie Schryver and Diane Schryver’s families in Las Vegas struggled for cover for a while, and the two sisters ‘ lives diverged.
” She was simply caught in a slump, like so many people in this country”, Sallie Schryver said of her daughter’s struggle with cover.
Diane Schryver said when Sallie Schryver spoke to her on August 5 that she had trouble remembering details like her sister’s son’s brand and where she lived. Sallie Schryver was stunned when she learned that her girl had just been released a short while later.
Sallie Schryver said,” They only widen those doors so that she could walk straight out it.”
Sallie Schryver assumes that her release was caused by an crowded hospital, but the details remain a mystery.
Although institutions do have more occurrences during the summertime, Valley and UMC both maintained adequate staffing.
Due to federal privacy regulations, Valley Hospital informed the Review-Journal that it is unable to post on any particular patient issues. According to director Gretchen Papez, the discharge policy generally advises patients to wait until a doctor has formally discharged them from the hospital before leaving. However, if a patient wants to leave, the hospital may follow that advice.
” We do work very busily with people who are unhoused to provide them with as many sources as possible before they leave our doctor, whether it’s water, food, vehicle runs or other goods, especially during extreme hot and cold weather”, Papez wrote in a statement.
Months later, Sallie Schryver understands little about her sister’s discharge, or where she went afterward. Sallie Schryver described a 412-day search for her sister as traumatizing. In a frenzy, she called the hospital, the coroner and the police.
She heard news from the coroner’s office just before she boarded a plane to search the streets of Las Vegas herself. Her sister had died as a result of heat stress in the environment.
Sallie Schryver was informed that her sister’s acting was being reported to her on the street, and she later discovered that she had suddenly passed out. Sallie Schryver was puzzled by the strange behavior given how disoriented she was prior to getting heatstroke years ago.
” You literally get blinded. You just see white, like a blinding white”, she said. ” It’s really a horrifying, terrifying thing to go through”.
Sallie Schryver has experienced confusion and rage over the situation, but for the most part she just misses her sister, who she described as incredibly funny. She recalls a magical trip to Las Vegas 17 years ago, despite not having had much chance to travel.
” We had the best time ever”, she wrote in a message. ” Dancing to the live bands on Fremont was epic, and it was very special and memorable to spend time with them.” I miss her”.
Heat-related effects are exacerbated by the opioid epidemic.
As heat rises, so too does a drug epidemic, both in Las Vegas and around the country.
Rouse, the coroner, said drug deaths tend to spike in the summer heat. Both she and UMC’s Patel think that the body’s ability to stay cool is being hampered by the physiological response to hard drugs. It’s a lethal combination.
” We ca n’t talk about heat without talking about drugs”, she said. ” Drugs, in themselves, make us more susceptible to succumbing to heat. … opioids are a factor in what we are experiencing in Clark County more than anything else.
A relapse for Stephen Paprotny, 36, turned fatal as he collapsed outside.
Paprotny liked animals so much that he regularly fed a pigeon at his work, much to his stepmother Aimee Paprotny’s confusion. His gentle nature was demonstrated in it.
” ‘ Everybody hates pigeons. She remembered Stephen Paprotny telling her,” I have to take care of them.” He “viewed life in that manner.” I mean, there was n’t an animal on the face of this planet that he did n’t love”.
After years of” self-medicating” for bipolar disorder, Stephen Paprotny was finally clean. His parents claimed that had he been using, his brother would have known.
Stephen Paprotny made a second home on June 1. He was on track to pay off his student debt because he was only one semester away from finishing nursing school and had a steady job selling cars.
He was discovered lying on the pavement outside his truck six days later.
For Aimee Paprotny, his stepmother of more than 30 years, the several hours he spent lying on the pavement are the worst part.
” You would think that at some point during that morning, his heart was still beating”, she said. ” People went by. There’s no doubt in my mind that people went by and saw him, maybe even saw part of his body, and nobody did anything”.
Stephen Paprotny’s death was caused by a combination of fentanyl and cocaine use and exposure to environmental heat. The temperature outside was 108 degrees, according to the autopsy report. A person called 911 as a result of a report that claimed they were leaving the parking lot at noon. He was declared dead at 1: 30 p. m.
The family is still unsure about the extent to which the heat and drugs contributed to his death. Even ignoring the biological effects of combined drug use and heat exposure, drugs can lead a person to fail to hydrate, according to Patel, the UMC doctor. Additionally, sunburns can prolong exposure.
” There were many, many hours that he laid out there. He spent a lot of time on his face, even if you could see the blisters on his face. It was n’t just an hour or two”, Aimee Paprotny said.
Stephen Paprotny had struggled before, even overdosing in the past, but Aimee Paprotny said the timing of his death, when he had seemed to be doing so well, was a “gut punch”.
You’re constantly anticipating that this will be the beginning of his reconciliation. You pray, you hope, you cry, you do whatever you can do”, she said. ” You’re never prepared”.
Scars linger for families
While all three people died under different circumstances, the common ground remains: Heat played a factor in their deaths. Summers are becoming more intolerable each year, and there is still time to get to Las Vegas’s 2024 final heat-related death count.
Her husband gave out bookmarks with Judy Reiber’s photo on them during Judy Reiber’s celebration of life, a nod to the joyful pastime she shared and died for.
Tim Reiber’s days away from work are now spent alone with his German shepherd, Rudy, and cat Phoebe. The cat has n’t shown any interest in him since, almost as though she is aware that her lone owner is the only one who has left behind a happy life.
Without his wife’s financial help, keeping up with a mortgage payment has been an uphill battle, and , he fears he could lose their home,  , too.
In an effort to find community in a city without any familial ties, he’s recently found solace in Bible study. He can still cling to faith, though.
He also can try to honor his wife’s memory. In September, Tim Reiber took his co-worker to see P! NK, his wife’s favorite artist. However, he claimed it was impossible to enjoy the audience with his wife present.
” She should’ve been there with us”, he said.
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