When Margaret Flynn, 85, answered the knock at her apartment door, she found a cluster of city employees looking at her with concern, some clutching paper fans and water bottles, others dabbing at beads of sweat on their upper lips.
“Is there anything you need?’’ asked Emily K. Shea, commissioner of elderly affairs, as she peered from the stifling corridor into Flynn’s apartment in the North End’s Ausonia Apartments. “Are you staying cool in there? Do you want a bottle of water?’’
Flynn assured them she was all right, then took the water.
“I’m just glad I got my air conditioner replaced,’’ she said as the cool air from her apartment wafted into the humid hallway. “It gets pretty hot up here.’’
As temperatures and humidity in Boston rose past stifling and toward unbearable yesterday, Flynn and hundreds of other elderly residents received visits from representatives from the Elderly Commission and the Boston Housing Authority. The very old and very young are particularly at risk for health problems in severe heat.
Temperatures are expected to be in the high 90s today, but throw in humidity, and it will feel more like 105 degrees, said Rebecca Gould, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. Even if temperatures are lower than expected, Gould said, they will still be high enough to push Boston into the throes of an official heat wave, the third consecutive day of temperatures above 90.
Yesterday morning, at Jordan Hospital in Plymouth, the medical center closed its emergency department to trauma victims and postponed more than 30 surgeries after air conditioning in two key departments broke down, affecting eight operating rooms and the patient intake floor.
Ambulances that would have brought trauma victims to Jordan instead drove 20 to 25 miles to the nearest hospitals equipped to handle those patients, said hospital spokesman Christopher Smalley. Nontrauma patients were relocated to air-conditioned wings.
Replacement parts were expected to arrive late last night or early this morning, Smalley said, along with a temporary unit to cool the emergency department and operating rooms in the meantime.
“There’s this perception that this entire hospital is without air conditioning, and that is not the case,’’ Smalley said. “It’s pretty hot in that wing, but we did have portable AC units hooked up during the height of the heat, and this is one of several buildings.’’
A heat advisory from Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s office reminded Boston residents about the vulnerability of children and the elderly and recommended drinking plenty of water, wearing light colors, and keeping physical activity to a minimum.
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