Tuesday, July 27, 2004 | 8:37 a.m.
The county appears on track to record far fewer heat-related deaths this year, according to the Clark County coroner's office.
To date this year, two people have died from exposure to heat, while 26 people died from heat exposure in 2002 and the same amount died in 2003.
A combination of factors, including milder summer weather, has likely contributed to the county's improved summer-heat survival rate so far.
According to meteorologists from the National Weather Service, most heat-related deaths occur at the beginning and end of the summer months, when residents are not yet used to the elevated temperatures and then after they've let their guard down and they are suddenly faced with an unusually warm days again.
Still, the elderly and very young are particularly vulnerable to the effects of heat throughout June, July and August.
An 82-year-old woman was the most recent casualty of Southern Nevada's desert heat. The woman, Audrey Auchstetter, died July 13 in her mobile home at the Jaycee Senior Citizen Community on Harmon Avenue. A longtime resident of the Las Vegas Valley, Auchstetter had spent much of her life in California and had served in the Navy for seven years, according to a neighbor.
The coroner's autopsy report cited heat along with heart disease as the cause of death.
The day she died, the high temperature reached 105 degrees and the dew point climbed to 56 degrees, considered normal but high, Barry Pierce, a meteorologist with the Weather Service, said.
There was no heat warning for that day. For the Weather Service to have declared one, the temperature would have had to have reached a high of 112 degrees.
A manager in the office at the senior citizen community said Auchstetter did not have refrigerated air-conditioning at her apartment. Instead, Auchstetter used a swamp cooler, an evaporative cooling system that is cheaper than refrigerated air but also one that works best when the dew point is lowest.
The dew point is a number that measures the absolute amount of water vapor in the air.
"Anything higher than a dew point of about 55 degrees and swamp coolers are pretty much useless," Pierce said.
A 69-year-old woman who lived near Auchstetter said Auchstetter appeared to be relatively healthy when she died. The neighbor, who would not give her name, said Auchstetter could not drive, so she often would take her to the grocery store whenever Auchstetter asked her to.
As far as the neighbor knew, no one else visited or assisted Auchstetter in her home. Before they both separately moved into the trailer park, the two women had known each other because their husbands had been members of a California Moose lodge together.
"Nobody else would help her; everyone's old in here," the neighbor said.
On June 3 a 72-year-old homeless man, Thomas Sullivan, died on Fremont Street also after the heat exacerbated a pre-existing heart problem.
If no one else died from heat this year, 2004 would be the least deadly year since 1998 when no deaths were attributed to exposure to high temperatures.
In 1993 three people died from heat-related illnesses. By 2001 that number had jumped to 20 and it stayed at 26 for 2002 and 2003.
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