SAN ANTONIO – Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones and a city committee flipped on a no-action recommendation from staff to track heat-related deaths in San Antonio, approving the policy for a future Community Health committee meeting.
The Governance Committee met on Wednesday to consider a slew of Council Consideration Requests (CCR), including the heat death tracking measure.
Deceleration, an environmental justice news outlet in San Antonio, first reported on the planned meeting earlier this week.
What does the CCR request?
District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and District 5’s Teri Castillo jointly filed the CCR on April 16, which requested the following items:
Explore best practices for tracking heat-related deaths in the city, collaborating with the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office, city and county public safety departments, and local hospitals
Create a tracker for heat-related deaths
Create and implement an Urban Heat Island (UHI) Mitigation and Adaptation Plan
Castillo said the CCR was filed in conjunction with the Southwest Workers Union (SWU) and community members working with those experiencing homelessness.
SWU sent a letter to the Governance Committee ahead of the Wednesday meeting, urging them to approve the CCR.
The letter highlights steps that places like Maricopa County in Arizona have taken to respond to heat-related deaths, such as the county’s distinction between “heat-caused” and “heat-contributed” deaths.
You can view the CCR in full in the embed below:
City’s public health already tracks heat illnesses
Driving issues for the suggested no vote on the CCR included several existing plans tackling heat illness tracking in some capacity, such as the SA Climate Ready Plan and a Heat Resilience Playbook led by the city’s resilience and sustainability departments, San Antonio Metropolitan Health Director Claude Jacob said in remarks to the committee.
Moreover, a standardized mode of tracking heat-related deaths does not currently exist in Texas, several officials said during the discussion.
Jacob called the issue of heat-related deaths “a national conundrum,” but pointed to at least four city initiatives currently aligning with the CCR.
For example, a Heat-Related Illnesses Dashboard compiled by Metro Health — updated weekly from March to October — displays data from emergency room visits due to heat-related illnesses, complaints or discharge diagnoses beginning in 2022.
According to the dashboard, June and August saw the most heat-related illnesses reported in San Antonio, at 105 and 121, respectively. The heat index in August was 100 degrees, per the dashboard’s data.
“Just know the national conundrum around this has to do with, actually, here in Texas, not having a standardized way to track these heat-related deaths,” Jacob said.
Jacob did point to a pre-existing relationship with the ME’s office and the Maricopa County Public Health Department. Both the county and San Antonio are members of the Big Cities Health Coalition and share best practices, Jacob said.
‘Maybe we can help create that standard’
McKee-Rodriguez said community members and near-constant warm temperatures in San Antonio this year prompted the CCR’s filing.
In this October alone, San Antonio is on pace to challenge the all-time record for most 90° days in October (19 days set in 1947) and could end up with the warmest October on record. So far, the city has experienced 13 days of 90°, according to KSAT 12 meteorologists.
In his remarks, the councilman pointed to data suggesting more than 300 people died from complications from extreme heat, including a District 2 resident experiencing homelessness.
“We know that extreme heat doesn’t impact everyone equally,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “It’s our unhoused neighbors, our outdoor workers, seniors and communities with fewer trees and more asphalt who face the higher risks.”
>> Haven for Hope outreach workers bring relief to people experiencing homelessness amid extreme heat
The urban heat island (UHI) effect is one palpable cause of extreme heat, especially in communities lacking tree canopy or shade infrastructure.
With the UHI, temperature differences in a more shaded part of the city could look vastly different from those in areas without tree coverage, thus potentially causing public health-related challenges for those in dilapidated homes or those with pre-existing health conditions.
San Antonio reported 835 heat-related illnesses in 2023, the hottest summer on record, and 571 in 2024. To date in 2025, there have been 216 heat-related illnesses, according to Sombrilla, the official magazine of UT San Antonio.
UT San Antonio researchers have been tracking UHI impacts for some time, including targeted instances in homes on the West Side.
District 4 Councilman Edward Mungia suggested a community-driven approach to gathering the necessary data to support Metro Health and other partners.
“I think it can inform us on other things,” he said. “If we have this data and we find out that most people are dying as a result of construction work in the summertime, that should inform us at the city-level.”
Mungia said it could even help drive city advocacy at the state and federal levels.
“This is what’s happening in San Antonio, the state may not have a standard, but maybe we can help create that standard for our own local government,” Mungia said.
‘Our numbers are probably underrepresented’
District 3 Councilwoman Phyllis Viagran, while supporting the call to approve and forward the CCR, acknowledged some of the existing efforts to address extreme heat.
However, she did point to confusion in what gets attributed as the official cause of death when considering possible pre-existing health conditions.
“The no-action part of this is that we can’t standardize for everybody else and track accurately; in fact, our numbers are probably underrepresented on our website because of the requirements or the standards by which the medical examiner’s office issues the death certificates,” City Manager Erik Walsh said.
Walsh continued, stating that the city would still need to learn from Maricopa County’s best practices and continue to update the Metro Health dashboard more accurately.
Mayor Jones echoed her support to forward the CCR to the Community Health Committee for consideration. It was unanimously approved.
“I think it is important that we do try to understand what, maybe, frankly, causing but also exacerbating some of these health conditions in our community,” Jones said.
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