In a slice of park alongside the Van Wyck Expressway in Jamaica, Queens, Christina Charlie and her 6-year-old daughter sat in the only shade available \u2014 a patch of shadow underneath a jungle gym. Ms. Charlie was holding a water gun, and every so often she would spray at her daughter\u2019s forehead, then her own.<\/p>\n
As a heat wave began to throttle New York City this week, with temperatures expected to reach about 100 degrees on Thursday, the discomfort was not felt evenly across the city. New Yorkers all over are suffering, but some must endure the extreme weather in neighborhoods where the heat not only feels more oppressive but is also more difficult to escape.<\/p>\n
More than nearly any place in New York, the heat was most acutely felt in this part of Queens; Jamaica is one of the roughly three dozen neighborhoods that public health experts deem extremely vulnerable to heat. It is deficient in nearly all the amenities that provide relief from a heat wave, like leafy parks, tree-lined sidewalks and easy access to air-conditioned spaces. And it is poor, like many other heat-vulnerable communities.<\/p>\n
As Ms. Charlie and her daughter sweated in their little patch of shade in the park, she said it was still preferable to being at home: The central air in her apartment was shut off on the hottest day of the summer so far. She hadn\u2019t paid the bill.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need some trees or something in this park,\u201d Ms. Charlie, 30, said, between spritzing them both with the squirt gun. \u201cIt is hot as hell out here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a slice of park alongside the Van Wyck Expressway in Jamaica, Queens, Christina Charlie and her 6-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[24789,98,100,99,83827,108331,109327,9,24,56,63,13996],"class_list":["post-285461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-air-conditioning","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-heat-and-heat-waves","tag-heatstroke","tag-jamaica-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-urban-areas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285461"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285461\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}