LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Public health experts and community leaders are calling for extreme heat to be treated as an emergency, as Las Vegas ranks among the fastest-warming cities in America.
At an extreme heat summit held downtown Wednesday, the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada joined local stakeholders to discuss infrastructure and public health challenges. The summit marked the kickoff of the RTC's Transportation Resiliency Improvement Plan.
WATCH | Geneva Zoltek heads to the 'Extreme Heat Summit' to learn how leaders are working to address rising temps
"So this is a federally funded study that the RTC received through the Federal Highway Administration, and it's really allowing the RTC to come together with our regional partners so we can all understand the scale of the challenge in front of us and then we can have a coordinated approach to addressing extreme heat and changing weather patterns moving forward," Andrew Kjellman, RTC's Deputy CEO, told Channel 13.
The funding will help officials understand the impacts of heat on both public health and infrastructure.
"We're looking at how extreme heat can impact our pavement mix, make sure we can withstand hotter temperatures, make sure our bridges are designed for higher heat tolerances," Kjellman explained.
The gathering comes on the heels of 12 straight days of record-breaking heat this past March.
"I've never seen a March like that," Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom said, "If you live here, you know that things are really getting worse. Mosquitoes, heat, um, people dying, which didn't happen when I was growing up, so it's a problem."
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Public health experts at the summit noted that extreme heat is already the deadliest weather event in the country, and the risk in Las Vegas continues to grow.
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