Oregon Governor Concerned Record Heat Wave in Pacific Northwest Is ‘Harbinger of Things to Come’

Oregon Governor Kate Brown said on Sunday she’s worried the record heat wave in the state is a “harbinger of things to come.”

The alarming heat wave in the Pacific Northwest has killed dozens of people in Oregon. Power cables were melting and roads were buckling in the extreme heat.

CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe asked Brown about predictions from climate scientists that heat waves like this “are likely to be more frequent, more intense, and last longer in the future.”

“If that’s the case, how should residents in your state and across the Pacific Northwest be preparing for that?”

Brown said they’re been working to prepare for the effects of climate change for several years, but this heat wave was “unprecedented.”

The governor went on to call it “a harbinger of things to come”:

We literally have had four emergency declarations in this state at the federal level since April of 2020. In Labor Day last year, we had horrific wildfires. They were historic. We lost over a million acres, over 4,000 homes and nine lives. And what is really, really clear, that just like we saw during the pandemic, throughout these emergency events are communities of color, our low income families are disproportionately impacted. And we have to center the voices of Black and brown and indigenous people at the forefront of our work as we do emergency preparedness.

You can watch above, via CBS.