For months, Vancouver resident Kirsten Sharp has been fighting her strata council, or condo management, for permission to install a heat pump. Having a cool home is imperative for Sharp’s health; she lives with a disabling spinal cord injury. “When things heat up or cool down, my body does not know how to adjust.
So, I don’t sweat. I don’t adjust [to] temperature. I just continue to heat up, and am at risk of stroking,” she said.
In the summer of 2025, Sharp was hospitalized four days before her wedding after passing out in her overheating condo. On average, her home retains heat 10 degrees above outdoor temperatures. Heading into a summer with predictions for BC and much of Canada to be hotter than usual as a result of El Niño, Sharp is reminded of the deadly BC heat dome.
It has been five years since the event, which killed 619 people in the southern coastal parts of British Columbia. From June 25 to July 1, 2021, temperatures broke records, turning homes into ovens. During the day, the extreme temperatures caused heat indoors to rise and nighttime did not offer a reprieve.
This phenomenon is known as indoor overheating. Summers since the heat dome have remained very hot, which has motivated the BC government to adopt changes to protect residents. Jatinder Baidwan, BC’s chief coroner and the scientific director of environmental health at the BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC), said many improvements have been made in provincial and federal policy.
Initiatives such as free air conditioners and a public heat alert system have been developed to prevent and protect the most vulnerable. But some individuals, like Sharp, still face barriers to cooling their homes. Sharp’s disability puts her at great risk for heat-related illnesses and death.
Since her body’s cooling system is compromised, she could apply under disability rights. But because she sits on the strata council that will decide whether she can install a heat pump, Sharp said she would feel guilty asking for special treatment. Though the summer is projected to bring extremely hot weather to the area, Sharp must endure the heat while working from home until her strata council’s general meeting in October, where she hopes to see a three-quarter majority vote.
The council’s concerns involve building aesthetics and noise. “Fighting for asks as a person with a disability is hard enough as it is. Every day is a fight.
And now to have to fight for a heat pump, and just putting together the arguments, and trying to convince people — it’s exhausting,” she said. How heat, much like the cold, threatens Canadians' health The BC Coroners Service and BCCDC studied the heat-related deaths of 2021 and the social infrastructure needed to prevent future deaths in a report that made national headlines. The office then turned what it learned into steps for the province to implement.
With the summer of 2026 projected to bring more extreme heat, the chief Baidwan told Canada’s National Observer the province is now better equipped to handle that heat. He and the BCCDC are continuing to work towards removing barriers to cooling for everyone, especially those most susceptible to heat-related injuries and death. “The biggest fixes we’re going to get are our structural fixes around our building code,” said Baidwan, who was also a part of the panel that reviewed the heat-dome deaths.
“Canada has really been about insulating our homes so that we don’t suffer the cold. We’ve never really thought about suffering the heat.” During the heat dome, temperatures along the Pacific coast broke record highs by at least five degrees celsius. Anomalies reached upwards of 20 degrees higher than expected.
In response to the catastrophe, the BC Coroners Service made three recommendations: that the province develop a coordinated provincial heat alert response system; that it work to ensure vulnerable populations are identified and supported through extreme heat events; and that it implement prevention and long-term risk mitigation strategies. The BC Heat Committee was formed to help reduce health impacts of heat and create the Heat Alert Response System, which notifies locals of heat risks. The committee also works with organizations like the Red Cross to organize check-ins with vulnerable community members during heat events.
Learning from the tragedy Inspired by the work of the BC Coroners and BCCDC, Vancouver, Toronto and other cities started government programs, in 2023 and 2025, to provide air conditioners to vulnerable communities. Most programs focus on low-income individuals and those with health concerns. Then, in 2024, Vancouver passed a bylaw requiring new homes to have a room under 26 degrees celsius.
Research indicates this as the threshold of safety for the human body before its temperature regulating systems risk failing. The BC Coroners death review report found that 98 per cent of all heat-related deaths occurred indoors. “It’s not about the occasional day where it spikes to 34.
It’s about the five days and longer when it spikes to 34 and it never really cools,” said Baidwan. Sarah Henderson, scientific director of environmental health at the BCCDC, was also part of the panel that reviewed the deaths for the coroner’s office and discovered populations that are at an even greater risk than the elderly and infants. She says there were disproportionate impacts for people struggling with poverty, and living with physical conditions or mental health challenges, particularly schizophrenia.
When analyzing deaths, the BCCDC found that if a person’s “ability to respond” was inhibited by these factors, their vulnerability increased, said Henderson. Living with physical and mental health conditions sometimes affects a person’s ability to understand how at risk they are, she continued. In response to the BC heat dome, municipal, provincial and federal policy changes were made to better protect and prepare people for extreme heat events.
These changes built off of the recommendations from the BC Coroners Service. Looking ahead Through the deaths of 619 people in BC, Baidwan and Henderson have set out to make sure governments of every scale do what is necessary to avoid preventable deaths. “I honestly think that any municipality that hasn’t read our death review panel report is missing something,” said Baidwan.
The BC Coroners and BC Centre for Disease Control are working towards hosting a symposium where researchers and officials can discuss what they’ve learned and suggest a new path forward. Baidwan has consulted Wales and Japan, which have seen similar extreme heat events recently. Henderson and Baidwan said the awareness people have gained has led to more positive action being taken by individuals.
“One thing the heat dome did in BC was make the entire population very aware of extreme heat hazards,” said Henderson. “People have visceral memories of the event that makes the conversation about protecting themselves from extreme heat more meaningful to them than other people who maybe haven’t experienced an event like that.” It wasn’t until the heat dome event in 2021 that Sharp realised how lucky she was to have central air conditioning that year. This year, as it’s getting extremely hot again, Sharp is worried about how she will get through another summer working from home without a heat pump.
When she is not working, Sharp finds herself looking at weather predictions and worrying about whether she is taking the right steps to fight for a heat pump or is talking to the right people who can help her. “All I can think about is, ‘I need to get through this summer,’” she said. “It’s exhausting.”
