Amid Butler’s heat wave, doctor warns children are especially vulnerable
For the past few days, Butler County has experienced its first heat wave of 2025, with temperatures coming dangerously close to record-highs on Sunday, June 22, through Tuesday, June 24.
The county, along with several others in Western Pennsylvania, is under an extreme heat warning from the National Weather Service, which is in effect until 8 p.m. Wednesday.
“We’ve been under it constantly. We’ve been under it since Monday at 8 a.m.,” meteorologist David Shallenberger of the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh said. “We’ve been in temperatures in the 90s for the past three days, but we start to cool off just a little bit, and we’ll be dealing with temperatures in the high 80s on Wednesday and Thursday.”
While heat waves can be hard for just about anyone to cope with even in the most ideal conditions, it’s the youngest and oldest people who have the most difficulty regulating their body temperature.
“Young children and the elderly are the most susceptible,” said Dr. Joe Aracri, chairman of the pediatrics department at Allegheny Health Network. “Children are small, so they have more of a surface area to weight ratio, so their skin is exposed. They’re easier to get dehydrated or overheated.”
Some outward signs that a child may be suffering from heat exhaustion — or worse, heat stroke — include dehydration, long periods between urination, disorientation and paler-than-usual skin.
“If you see that your child is having an altered mental status, having trouble concentrating or focusing … get them in and cool them down,” Aracri said.
Not every family in Western Pennsylvania is lucky enough to live in an environment with air conditioning, and even those that do aren’t always lucky enough to have it working all the time due to power outages or equipment failure. Whenever air conditioning fails, there are alternative options for families to keep cool.
The Grapevine Center, a mental health facility on North Elm Street in Butler, operates as a free public cooling center anytime the temperature crosses a certain threshold. Other public facilities, such as Butler County’s public libraries, may serve as effective shelters from heat waves.
Further, there are other ways for families to cope with extreme heat that don’t necessarily require electricity or fans.
“Stay in the shade; try to stay out of direct sunlight,” Aracri said. “Dress in very light layers so your skin can breathe, stay hydrated and watch out for overexertion.”
For some children — especially those who spend their summer playing youth sports such as baseball or soccer — the risk of overexertion may be greater. Thus, so is the need for those children to stay hydrated.
“The important thing is to do what's called ‘pre-hydrating’,” Aracri said. “Make sure that you’re drinking a lot of fluids before you go out so you don’t start off dehydrated. And the coaches should make sure that there are cooling breaks during the game, so the children are in shape and having access to lots of fluids.”
There is one place that a child absolutely should not be during the summer, and that is alone in a car on a sweltering day.
According to the National Safety Council, 39 children in the United States died of heat stroke in 2024 as a result of being left alone in a hot car.
According to Aracri, the temperature inside a vehicle can climb as high as 150 degrees during the summer, due to the greenhouse effect.
“Between the windshield and the other windows, it magnifies the sunlight coming through, which increases the heat,” Aracri said. “And there’s no place for that heat to dissipate, so it all keeps feeding heat into the car, which causes it to continue to heat up like an oven.”
