Heat wave heading toward the East Coast

With much of the nation in the grip of a broiling heat wave, few people are hit as hard as the poor.

Norma Salazar, who shares a tiny trailer home with her husband and six children in Horizon City, on the outskirts of El Paso, has to rely on an evaporative cooler, a cheap alternative to air conditioning that sucks the hot, dry desert air through a mesh of water-soaked fibers.

But it cools only half of the trailer, and when the heat climbs above 100, not even that.

“When it gets really hot, we turn on the fans and stay inside,’’ Salazar says. Going to a library or a mall to keep cool is not an option, she says. “The car doesn’t have air conditioning, so getting there is even worse than just staying inside.’’

In downtown Minneapolis, the Salvation Army’s Harbor Light Center threw open its doors for anyone who needed to cool off and drink a glass of ice water.

Bill Miller, executive director of the center, said he allowed about 200 people who slept at the shelter Sunday night to stay instead of being asked to leave in the morning.

“We don’t have them leave when it’s this hot,’’ he said. “It’s hot enough to get dehydrated, especially if you’re drinking. In this heat, it could kill you.’’

Chicago officials opened six cooling centers, many of them in lower-income neighborhoods, along with hundreds of air-conditioned public buildings such as libraries, park facilities, and police stations.

Anne Sheahan, spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Family and Support Services, expected the number of people seeking refuge at the centers would climb in step with the temperatures, which were not expected to drop much below the mid-90s throughout the week. The city was also offering rides to cooling centers.

In Chicago, public schools spokeswoman Marielle Sainvilus said the district would not cancel summer school classes despite the heat.

“Unfortunately a lot of our kids do not have air conditioning at home,’’ she said. “And they’ll also get nutrition and a safe environment.’’

In East St. Louis, Ill., which is among the nation’s poorest cities, 79-year-old Bernice Sykes spent yesterday in a soup kitchen that had been pressed into service as a makeshift cooling center.

Sykes, a retired restaurant worker living on Social Security income, figured she had little choice to seek relief: One of her two tiny fans failed Sunday in her $500-a-month-efficiency apartment, which has no air conditioning.

In Oklahoma, the intense heat has generated a flood of applications from elderly and low-income residents for money to help pay their utility bills.

The Summer Cooling Assistance Program was launched July 11 and ended just three days later when all $22 million in the budget was paid out, officials said.