The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell

After raising four kids in Ohio, Pullman had moved to Arizona in 1988 to escape the cold Ohio winters. She worked in a hospital, then retired in 2011 and lived on a fixed income of less than $1,000 a month. During the summer of 2018, she was late to pay her electric bill and owed $176.84. On September fifth, Pullman paid $125, leaving $51.84 unpaid. Two days later, when the temperature hit 107 degrees, her electric company, Arizona Public Service (APS), cut off her power. A week later, Pullman’s daughter became worried when she hadn’t heard from her mother and alerted locals. A Maricopa County sheriff entered the house and found Pullman dead in her bed. Cause of death: heat exposure. A few months later, Phoenix New Times published an account of Pullman’s death, including the fact that APS had turned off Pullman’s power over an unpaid bill of $51. In 2018, APS cut off power to customers more than 110,000 times, according to the company’s own data. Of those, more than 39,000 cutoffs happened during the particularly scorching months of May through September.