July 24, 2013

Community’s Living Room Cool and Comfortable Again After Heat Wave Intrudes

Princeton’s cooling stations saw their share of use during last week’s heat wave. but the Princeton Public Library, the “community’s living room” and a cherished refuge during Hurricane Sandy, was forced to close early Friday and Saturday and all day Sunday.

The library had already suffered through a week without air-conditioning, June 26-July 2, while a new compressor was being installed.

With the heat index over 100 through the weekend, the timing of Friday’s blow could not have been worse. A temporary fix allowed the library to open on Monday, but the final repairs could not be made until later that night, with work completed around 11:30 p.m. Tuesday morning the library was back to normal.

“It had nothing do to with the new compressor, which has been doing fine,” said Ms. Burger, who thinks the failure most likely resulted from stress on the system due to last week’s extreme heat. “It got so hot on Friday that the chiller tower went into the alarm mode, which tripped a switch that shut down the cooling. The chiller is on the roof, exposed to the sun. It turned out that we needed a new switch, which had to be ordered, and then repair people were busy with other heat-related emergencies.”

Having always been dedicated to making sure the library lived up to its role as the community’s living room, Ms. Burger expressed something not unlike any homeowner’s frustration (if on the grand scale) with parts that needed ordering and workers busy with other heat-related tasks.

“People were upset to find that we were closed,” Ms. Burger said Monday, speaking from her office on the third floor where the lights were low and fans were whirring. As she spoke, the rain began. Though Monday’s cloudburst may have signaled the end of the heat wave, she was still brooding over the weekend’s closings. “We do anything we can to stay open,” she said. “But it was just too hot in here for the staff to work.”

As for other cooling stations, Sgt. Michael Cifelli reports a constant flow of people finding relief in the Princeton Police Department. “We went through four cases of water,” he said.

Mauri Tyler, program director at another cooling station, the Suzanne -Patterson -Senior Resource Center behind Monument Hall says people came looking for both relief and recreation, since computers are available. “We had a larger than expected turnout for our Wednesday afternoon showing of Hyde Park on the Hudson.”

Craig Gronczewski, MD, the chairman of Emergency Medicine at UMCPP, reports no unusual spike in heat-related illnesses. “A few a day, that’s all,” he said. “Most people are pretty well educated by now.”

A Record July

Rutgers meteorologist Dave Robinson summed up by suggesting that July 2013 will likely rank as one of the five warmest New Jersey Julys on record. He also pointed out that with July 2013 on the top 10 list, five of the hottest Julys on record will have occurred since 2006. He also noted that while no daytime records were set, the air at night has been so humid that most nighttime temperatures failed to drop below 70 degrees.