When the heat wave of 1896 hit, what did Roosevelt do that was so memorable?
In 1896, it’s a time when the government has no responsibility for the poor or the hungry, and Roosevelt champions a scheme to give away free ice. He personally supervises the distribution of the ice, and he actually tours some of the worst back alleys of New York’s tenements to see how the mostly poor immigrant families used the ice. Why hasn’t this tragedy received more attention? I think this is perhaps the most forgotten natural disaster in American history. We associate natural disasters with the moment the disaster strikes—dramatic images, property damage—and, of course, a heat wave has none of those things. Most Americans don’t know even now that heat waves are actually this country’s No. 1 natural-disaster killer. Think about the heat waves we’ve had this summer. When local media covers heat waves, what are the images that we see? It’s nice images of children frolicking in fountains and eating ice cream, not the more sinister images we associate with damaged buildings and flood
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