In Caribou, Maine, a town of 7,400, the splash pad was packed with children at noon on Wednesday as temperatures soared. But next to it, at a cooling center for the rural area’s many elderly residents, all the folding chairs were empty, even though three air-conditioners were blasting a frigid breeze.
Officials had spread the word across Aroostook County about the cooling center on social media, on radio stations and TV, and in local newspapers. However in Maine, and across wide areas of rural America, the techniques familiar in cities to help people beat the heat are much more difficult to carry out effectively.
“But we’re here,” said Gary Marquis, the superintendent of the Caribou Parks and Recreation Department.
Large parts of the nation were boiling this week as temperatures climbed in Maine and other areas that are not accustomed to mid-June heat waves. In many cities, residents cooled off in shady parks, jumped in public pools, or hydrated with cold water handed out by paramedics and police officers stationed at busy intersections or inside public transportation hubs — all tactics health officials encourage to help avoid heat-related illnesses.
These kinds of strategies are common in countless cities because they are effective in areas with large populations. In more rural areas, however, people are far more spread out and much harder to reach.
“We’re missing a large swath of our society, and a swath that typically has higher levels of chronic disease, older populations and lower income,” said Kevin Lanza, an assistant professor of environmental science at UTHealth Houston in Austin. “All three are factors increasing the serious risk on rural communities in the face of climate change.”
Some of America’s most heat-vulnerable populations are far from places like Phoenix, which is one of the hottest cities in America. In fact, last July Phoenix experienced 31 straight days in which the temperature reached or exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
But places that are traditionally less hot — like parts of Maine, Wisconsin and even North Dakota and Alaska — are considered among the nation’s most socially vulnerable to extreme heat exposure, according to research by the U.S. Census Bureau. That is partly because they are far less accustomed to — and less prepared for — extreme heat. The risk factors include poor quality of housing, few transportation options and significant financial hardship that, when piled on top of rising temperatures, put them at risk.
In Maine, for instance, a heat wave this early in the season complicates typical ways to cool off. While residents in some areas have access to swimming holes, some public pools have yet to open. People who live in coastal areas might theoretically take a dip in the ocean, but this time of year, that could be dangerous. Water temperatures are still so cold that hypothermia is a risk.
The decision to open cooling centers is left up to individual communities in Maine, said Vanessa Corson, a spokeswoman for the Maine Emergency Management Agency.
“If there are no cooling centers open in the less populated, rural areas of the state, or if those cooling centers are too far away, people are advised to go to a public place with air-conditioning like a store, restaurant or library,” she said in an email. “Every individual or household should have a preparedness plan for situations like this.”
In Aroostook County, which shares a border with Canada, Mr. Marquis said officials had asked him just one other time in the past to open a cooling center inside Caribou’s community recreation center, about two years ago. No one came then, either, he said.
On Wednesday, opening up was complicated by the federal holiday, Juneteenth: Employees had the day off. But Mr. Marquis said he had found a worker willing to staff the center in case anyone needed a break from the heat.
Maybe people will trickle in as the temperature rises, he said Wednesday afternoon.
Researchers who study heat have focused on tactics to offer relief for urban areas not only because of their population density, but because, with their miles of dark asphalt and widespread lack of trees, cities become hotter than the surrounding countryside. Developing new strategies to bring relief from the heat to rural areas has been neglected.
“Cooling centers and such work in urban areas, but they don’t work so well in rural settings,” said Ashley Ward, the director of the Heat Policy Innovation Hub at Duke University, whose work focuses on the health impacts of climate extremes and community resilience.
People who need help may live far from libraries, police departments and fire halls that serve as cooling centers in smaller towns. “We need interventions that fit the environment,” she said. “We need to do better.”
Jason Troyer, the director of the Emergency Management Agency in Holmes County, Ohio, said his biggest tool was education. He focuses on telling people to stay out of the sun between noon and 6 p.m., which he knows is difficult for a rural work force that may include farmers, carpenters and roofers. He urges people to wear loose-fitting, cool clothing and to stay hydrated.
Almost half of Holmes County’s population of about 45,000 is Amish, he said, and eschews electricity. The community is often more acclimated to heat than others who are accustomed to air-conditioning, he said, so members seem to fare better. Mr. Troyer is also captain of the East Holmes Fire and Emergency Medical Services District and said he hadn’t seen increased calls for heat-related emergencies in the community in past years.
Many rural areas in the U.S. are also low-income areas with mobile homes and trailers, which, with their poor insulation, can in hot weather feel as though they are baking occupants.
“Even though people may have access to air-conditioning, they can’t afford to run it in high temperatures at the levels they need,” said Maggie Sugg, an associate professor in the department of geography and planning at Appalachian State University, who has studied heat vulnerabilities in North and South Carolina. “We have policy initiatives that say utilities can’t cut off heat in cold weather, but we don’t have the same types of policies for heat. We need to treat heat the same as we do cold weather.”
Officials are tapping federal funding to help install a type of heat pump that works well in manufactured housing, said Michael Stoddard, the executive director of Efficiency Maine, an independent agency that runs energy-efficiency programs.
Heat pumps have become popular in Maine because they offer a more inexpensive, energy-efficient means of warming up homes during frigid winters than oil furnaces. They extract heat from outside air, even in subzero temperatures, and then pump it indoors. And, in the summer, they can operate in reverse, pulling heat from inside a building and pumping it outside, cooling the indoor space.
But the cooling has been an afterthought, until recently.
“We live in a part of the country that’s never needed air-conditioning before,” Mr. Stoddard said. “Now it’s becoming apparent it’s pretty imperative to have cooling in the summer.”
Jon Barrett, who lives in Winterport, Maine, about 15 miles from Bangor, said he bought two heat pumps in October in preparation for winter. He has been running them nonstop the past couple of days, even at night.
“I’ve got them both cooling the upstairs and the downstairs,” he said. “And they’re working great.”