This summer, large parts of the United States were put under heat and up to 174 million people. From Phoenix to Boston, St. Louis to Tampa, the cities are looking for emergency cooling protection by extending the hours of public libraries, converting warehouses and creating resilience centers. As I recently found in a recent sequence of the Anchorage Museum's Chatter brand podcast, museums that have already invested in a good HLK will be presented to look after their collections in view of extreme heat as a sweat for their community. Keith Cook, director of archives and collections in the 390th Memorial Museum in Tucson, Arizona, tells us today on the blog, how his organization invited people to rest and cool down, and prepared his employees to react to heat -related health notations.
How could your museum integrate into its communities into systems of climate effectiveness? For example, you can use the resources of the climate resilience for the cultural heritage to check the risk projections for your area in the coming decades, to combine with employees of the local government who are commissioned with emergency reaction, and (Channeling Keith) work with libraries and museums in your region to promote your organizations as AS organizations Cool Places for hanging.
Their from a warming future,
Elizabeth Merritt, Vice President, Strategic For sight and founding director, Center for the Future of Museums.
In the further course of the climate crisis, we are all forced to find more extreme weather patterns, including intensive heat waves. We are sure to feel the heat here in South Arizona. This year alone we saw days when the temperatures reached a hundred degrees of Fahrenheit before spring was over. And although it was not as disappointing as last year, the summer monsoon was not much better for 2025 and took us more days to bake in the sun. These things prove museums, be it in the collections in our care or to the people who come to our facilities. Museums already take measures to tackle these problems in their respective communities. In this article I will share some of the steps that our museum has taken to fix the warmth that you can implement yourself.
In the past two years, our museum has been carried out some major renovation work to create a cool, uniform environment in our museum. This included the insulation of our roof and several outer walls and the installation of a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system (HLK). This not only offers a stable environment for our collections, but also makes our museum a more comfortable environment for our employees and our visitors. Since our museum installed our new HLK system, we have applied as one Cool Place to visit more people.
I promise that was the only father in this article. But if you have air -conditioned facilities, why shouldn't you apply accordingly? Let people know that you can get into your facility to rest and cool down. Make yourself part of the solution.
Admittedly, such measures are not cheap – these renovation work costs our museum over one million dollars. However, there are other steps that a museum can take that do not require budgeting for expensive construction projects.
Warmth can be incredibly exhausting on the human body, especially for older people and small children. With increasing temperatures, we should expect more cases to occur of heat -related diseases such as heat creation and heat stroke. Museums can be used to develop an emergency plan that is specially tailored to these heat -related health problems. For example, our employees and volunteers receive basic training for heat creation and heat stroke, in particular the differences between the two, which are looking for signs and what he can do to treat someone who suffers from him.
People who suffer from heat creation usually feel dizzy or bad and sweat. These are signs where the body works on overdrive to cool off. In such cases, the personnel and volunteers are recommended to bring the person to a bench where they can rest and offer the person a bottle of room temperature water and electrolyte packages in order to cool them down and rehydrate. You can even offer a moist paper towel that the person concerned can drape over your neck. Make sure that you should only offer one person who suffers from heat creation room water temperature water and not from cold water. Drinking cold water could shock the person's body. To ensure that a data subject can receive support in good time, keep their supplies near the entrance of their museum in a place that is easily accessible for both employees and volunteers. In our case, we keep water bottles and electrolyte packages in the lobby area so that employees and volunteers can deliver these items to the visitors as soon as they go through the doors.
On the other hand, thermal suspension is a life -threatening illness that requires immediate medical help. Some of the signs that have to look are washed out, a high body temperature and NO Sweat. These are all signs that the body overheated and cannot cool down. It is crucial to have an emergency plan to ensure that emergency vehicles can reach your facility as soon as possible. This was particularly true for our museum, which is located in the middle of the Pima Air and Space Museum (Pasm). In such a situation, you should have a way to quickly tell your partner organizations so that you can enable emergency services to the property. Our museum has several Walkie talkies with which employees and volunteers can communicate with our partners at PASM. As soon as an emergency takes place, an employee or a volunteer will be instructed to call 911, while another stay remains with the person concerned. As soon as the emergency services have been called, another employee or volunteer will be instructed to contact PASM employees in order to notify that emergency services are on the way. At this point, the PasM employee staff will wait until the ambulance arrives and leads it to our museum.
Delegate tasks during an emergency. Show on an employee or call him by name and tell him what to do.
Depending on how much time your visitors spend outdoors when visiting your facility, Remark to reduce your operating hours in the hotter months. Our museum is open for most of the year from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. But in summer we close two hours earlier, just before it gets too hot outside, the hottest time of the day is usually in the early to the middle afternoon, in which the risk of heat sickness increases. If you close your operating times in the early afternoon, you can have another way to limit people's exposure in extreme heat.
Extreme heat has become an unfortunate part of everyday life in many places across the country. So create a plan to protect your employees and visitors and show that you are a responsible, caring member of your community.
Additional resources
- To learn more about how the climate crisis affects and some of the steps that your museum can take to solve these problems, visit the Foundation for Advancement on the FAIC website (FAIC) on “Climate and Sustainability”.
- To get more about heat -related diseases and what you can do to help someone in need, visit the “Heat security and resources” of the National Weather Service page.
About the author
Keith Cook works as a director of archives and collections in the 390th Memorial Museum in Tucson, Arizona. He worked in the museum for seven years. He spends most of his free time to play either online or on the table top.