Medical examiner releases names of June heat wave victims

Published 12:00 am Saturday, August 7, 2021

The Oregon Medical Examiner’s Office has released records detailing the names, addresses and other information of 96 people who died from hyperthermia in the extraordinary late-June heat wave.

OPB and other news organizations received the records late Friday, Aug. 6.

The Oregon attorney general ordered the names, addresses, ethnicities and dates of deaths for confirmed deaths from the heat wave be made public, siding with four news organizations — Willamette Week, The Oregonian/OregonLive, KGW and the Portland Tribune — that had requested them.

The medical examiner had sought not to release the information, citing the confidentiality of death investigations. But the attorney general found that the public interest in the cases and the need to understand policy failures that contributed to the deaths justified releasing the records.

The 96 people so far confirmed to have died were residents of 28 different cities across the state. Sixty were Portland residents. Multiple residents of Salem, Albany, Hillsboro, and Gresham died as well.

“It’s isuch a tragedy. It’s really one of the most preventable things that we know how to solve,” said Vivek Shandas, a Portland State University professor who studies climate change adaptation and urban heat. “This is the list that I have been working on for the last 15 years and trying to not see.”

Oregon Public Broadcasting is a news partner of the Portland Tribune.