Heat-coping Tips For No Electricity or Rationed Electricity
If you have any good ones for people, add them!
Do you have unglazed baked tile floors, bricks, or those windows with a bunch of stacked tiles or baked unglazed pipe stacked in them to fill them up and let a breeze through? Are they in the SHADE? GET THEM WET. Yes it will dry up pretty quickly in the heat but you can sit near or against them. As terracotta or unglazed clay dries off very slowly it will cool the air around it.
If you can, get the top of your head wet. Air across wet hair has a cooling effect.
Unglazed clay pots, flowerpots, and even canvas bags can be soaked with water, set in the shade with good airflow, and used to try to keep some things cooler, like bottles of water or packages of food.
You can take turns using a fan, a big palm frond, or whatever you have to fan each other or an elder or baby to keep them cooler. Doing it in shifts means no one gets too tired or too hot.
You will all be very cranky because of the heat, but it is harder on the sick, the elderly, or children and infants. Watch them closely!! They can overheat so much faster.
GET LOW! If your house has a cellar and it is safe to be in (like, ventilated and escapable in an emergency), get down into it or put at least the high risk or elderly and babies in it. The earth will keep it cooler down there than anywhere else.
CROSSBREEZE. If you open a window or door at one corner of the house, then do the same at an opposite corner, this will draw air through the house. Dampened lightweight cloth in the window or doorway or damp mosquito netting will cool that air as it flows.
If you normally sleep upstairs, now you do not. Get everybody down on mattresses or just on the ground, on the ground floor. Upper stories or rooftops are often no place to be in a time like this. Even laying there with your eyes shut will give you rest if not sleep. It will help.
Dampened cloth hung up in the windows, doorways, breezeways, will help cool you off. Spray a fine mist over mosquito netting around beds.
If you have linen, or even cotton or hemp cloths but linen works amazingly for this, dampen it and put it over people's heads (like a nun's wimple or a sari, face clear) or shoulders, or over part of a baby's bed (never leave a baby unattended in this kind of weather or when you put drapey stuff by their bed like this) Again, it's evaporation that will cool you off a little.
Stay in the shade as much as you can. It is silly because it is obvious but stay in the shade.
The hottest part of the day will be the afternoon. Do not do anything physical or outdoors if you can avoid it during that time. If you must, --and jobs I know have no pity but this is a time when they will get you killed so you might have to risk losing your job, but keep your life, I am not kidding, you can drop dead out there- If you must go out, do so in the earliest morning hours or just before dawn. This is the best time and it will be the coolest then.
Again- Remember, Jobs will let you drop dead, and then it will not matter if you kept your job by dying for it. This is one of those times where you might end up deciding not to risk your life, and be yelled at or lose your current job. I know that might put you in danger of losing your house or starving. This is all terrible. but the heat will kill people. Your family probably cannot afford to lose you.
You will know what the right decision is for your situation, but you must also know that being asked to do certain things in the heat is to risk very real death. This may be a good reason to consider choosing to refuse to work certain hours, or to refuse to do certain tasks. It will be up to you, but I want you to know what you are risking. You could easily die.
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