Arizona Workers Are Old Pros At Sweating In The Southwest
Randy Mullins remembers all too well what it was like suffering heat exhaustion eight years ago. It was a windless day in Phoenix, and he’d just eaten lunch. “It just sneaks right up on you,” he recalls. “It hurts. I was cramped up. I [vomited] and passed out. It was the worst feeling I’d ever had.” He spent the night in a hospital with an IV.
Mullins, now a foreman with Kiewit Western Co., Phoenix, keeps a close eye on the crews working on a $200-million Interstate 10 widening project in Tucson. Temperatures there hit 107°F in the summer, but workers say it’s far more pleasant than the 117° average temperature in Phoenix.