Gov. Gavin Newsom has vetoed a bill that aimed to make it easier for farmworkers to make a workers’ compensation claim for heat illness.
SB 1299 would have changed the burden of proof in workers’ compensation claims when a farmworker develops a heat-related injury after laboring outdoors for an employer who fails to comply with the state’s heat safety standards. Instead of the farmworker having to prove the injury occurred on the job, as is typical in workers’ compensation cases, it would have been the employer’s responsibility to prove the illness was not work-related.
Under the bill’s provisions, if an employer failed to comply with the rules, any resulting heat-related injury to an employee would be “presumed to arise out of and in the course of employment.” It would have created a “rebuttable presumption,” which is more commonly used for law enforcement officers and firefighters who develop certain injuries that could arise from the risks inherent to their jobs.
In a veto message issued Saturday, Newsom said there is “no doubt” that California farmworkers need strong protections from the risk of heat-related illness, especially as climate change drives an increase in extreme temperatures.
“However, the creation of a heat-illness presumption in the workers’ compensation system is not an effective way to accomplish this goal,” he said. Newsom said heat safety rules are currently enforced by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, which is better equipped to enforce those worker protections.
Newsom also noted that Cal/OSHA is establishing an agricultural unit that specializes in worker protections and hazards found at agricultural worksites, and opening new district office locations in Fresno, Santa Barbara and Riverside.
“This dedicated unit will increase Cal/OSHA’s reach to farmworker communities throughout the Central Valley, where the largest number of farmworkers and their families reside,” Newsom said.
The legislation came as many farmworkers continue to labor in unsafe conditions and Cal/OSHA confronts a severe staffing shortage that is hampering its ability to enforce heat regulations for outdoor workers.
First enacted in 2005, the state’s heat illness prevention rules require employers to provide outdoor workers with fresh water, access to shade at 80 degrees and warmer, and cool-down breaks whenever a worker requests one. Employers must also maintain a heat illness prevention plan with effective training for supervisors to recognize the signs and symptoms of heat illness.
But nearly two decades after the rules were first enacted, ensuring compliance has remained challenging.
In 2009 and 2012, the United Farm Workers sued Cal/OSHA, accusing the agency of failing to enforce the regulations.
A 2022 study by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center found many farmworkers were still laboring without the protections. Of more than 1,200 workers surveyed, 43% reported their employers had not provided a heat illness prevention plan and 15% said they had not received heat illness prevention training.
The bill’s author, Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San José), previously described SB 1299 as a “creative work-around” that was “taking the tools that we do have available and trying to cobble together an approach that will hopefully spur greater compliance.”
“The employers hate the workers’ comp presumptions so much that it makes me feel like it might actually work,” Cortese previously told The Times. “The avoidance factor is so high with them that they’ll say, ‘My God, it’s actually easier for us to provide shade and water than to have to deal with a proliferation of expedited workers’ comp claims.’”
“We’re trying to take something that they view as kind of a thorn in their side and use it as a disincentive for the kind of behavior we’re seeing,” he said.
The UFW backed SB 1299.
“Despite the Governor’s veto of SB 1299, the UFW will continue to work to save farm worker lives,” UFW President Teresa Romero said in a statement Saturday.
Opponents of the bill, including the California Chamber of Commerce and the California Farm Bureau, acknowledged the importance of protecting farmworkers from heat illness, but had argued the issue should not be addressed through the workers’ compensation system.
This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative,funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to addressCalifornia’s economic divide.
As temperatures swelled to 128 degrees, Death Valley National Park rangers got a call that a group of six motorcyclists were in distress. All available medics rushed to the scene, and rangers dispatched the park’s two ambulances.
It was an “all-hands-on-deck call,” said Spencer Solomon, Death Valley National Park’s emergency medical coordinator. The superheated air was too thin for an emergency helicopter to respond, but the team requested mutual aid from nearby fire departments.
They arrived Saturday to find one motorcyclist unresponsive, and medics labored unsuccessfully to resuscitate him. Another rider who had fallen unconscious was loaded into an ambulance, where emergency medical technicians attempted to rapidly cool the victim with ice as they transported him to an intensive care unit in Las Vegas. The four other motorcyclists were treated at the site and released.
With record heat blanketing California and much of the West recently, Death Valley has hit at least 125 degrees every day since the Fourth of July, and that streak isn’t likely to change until the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.
Tourist Dave Hsu, left, feigns a chill as friend Tom Black takes a photograph at the Furnace Creek Visitor Center’s digital thermometer.
Extreme heat is both one of Death Valley’s greatest intrigues and its most serious safety concern. It’s not uncommon for a few people to die in the park from heatstroke in any given summer.
Located 200 feet below sea level and surrounded by steep, towering mountain ranges that trap heat, the valley is consistently among the hottest places on Earth.
In the summer, international travelers often schedule their trips without considering the weather. (All six of the men who fell victim to extreme temperatures near Badwater Basin on Saturday were from Germany.)
But even Southern California residents who are familiar with Death Valley’s hellish reputation will trek to the park just to experience the otherworldly heat.
“In L.A., people said, ‘No, don’t go out there; you’re crazy,’” said Nick Van Schaick, who visited the park early this week. He had spent the night in the nearby town of Beatty, Nev., then drove into the park at the crack of dawn Tuesday. “I don’t know. … There’s something compelling about this landscape.”
Visitors to Death Valley National Park drive in and out of the park on Highway 190 through the Panamint Valley, where temperatures were as high as 125 degrees recently.
Virtually all heat-related deaths are preventable, experts say, but what makes heat so dangerous is that it sneaks up on its victims.
The risk of Death Valley’s heat seems painfully obvious. It’s hard to miss the dozens of “Heat kills” signs throughout the park, and stepping out of a car there for the first time feels like sticking your face in an opened oven. Within seconds, your eyes begin to burn and your lips crack. Your skin feels completely dry — even though you’re sweating profusely, the sweat evaporates almost instantaneously.
But one of the first symptoms people experience as their core temperature begins to rise is confusion, which can inhibit a person’s ability to recognize that something is wrong or understand how to save themselves.
Studies have also shown that although almost everyone understands how to prevent heat illness, too few take action to protect themselves. That’s in part because many think they are uniquely able to handle the heat when in fact they are not. In 2021, a Death Valley visitor died from heat just days after another visitor had died on the same trail.
It’s a one-two punch. Hikers ignore the symptoms of heat exhaustion because they’re excited to hike or have nowhere else to go, said Bill Hanson, an instructor for Wilderness Medical Associates International and a flight paramedic in central Texas who specializes in heat-related emergencies. Then, “when a person reaches a pretty profound state of heat exhaustion — which by itself is not a lethal condition — and they’re still in that environment, the likelihood they’ll make the right decisions and reverse the process … is reduced because they have a reduced ability to make good decisions at all.”
One of the reasons that humans are quickly overcome by extreme heat is that there’s only one route for heat to exit the body. Blood carries heat from our core to our skin, and, when the breeze is too hot to carry heat away from us, the body can release it only through the evaporation of sweat. Any of that sweat that drips to the ground or is wiped off the face is a missed opportunity to cool down.
Visitors walk out onto the salt flats at Badwater Basin, taking advantage of cooler morning temperatures on a day when the mercury would rise as high as 125 degrees in Death Valley National Park.
In Death Valley, the air is so dry that sweat evaporates very easily, unlike in humid climates where the atmosphere contains more moisture. With profuse sweating, however, dehydration comes quickly. The park recommends visitors do their best to replenish lost water and drink at least a gallon a day if they’re spending time doing any physical activity outside.
But sweating and constant hydration will work only to a point.
“A 130-degree environment … there’s going to be a limited shelf life on a human body’s ability to exist in that environment without some technological support,” Hanson said.
Because of this, the park says to never hike after 10 a.m. during periods of extreme heat and recommends never straying more than five minutes away from the nearest air conditioning, whether it be in a car or building.
In the heat, sticking in groups can also save lives. While it might be difficult for a confused heat illness victim to recognize the symptoms or remember how to save themselves, friends can spot problems. In general, if you struggle to do anything that is normally easy for you — physically or mentally — stop to rest and seek cooler conditions immediately.
Muscle cramps are often the first sign the body is struggling to stay cool. They’re probably caused by a toxic concoction of dehydration, muscle fatigue and a lack of electrolytes like sodium, which are essential for chauffeuring water and nutrients throughout the body. Cramps are a sign that the body’s process for dumping heat is under stress.
Death Valley National Park visitor Steffi Meister, from Switzerland, photographs the landscape at Zabriskie Point where temperatures were as high as 125 degrees recently.
As the body struggles, heat exhaustion starts to set in. The brain, heart and other organs become tired from working to maintain the body’s typical temperature of 98 degrees. As the body passes 101 degrees, victims can start experiencing dizziness, confusion and headaches. It’s not uncommon for them to vomit, feel weak or even faint.
As the body passes 104 degrees, the entire central nervous system — responsible for regulating heat in the first place — can no longer handle the stress of the high temperatures. It starts to shut down. The victim might get so confused and disoriented that they no longer make sense. They might not even be able to communicate. They can start to have seizures and fall into a coma.
“To me, as a park medic, if you’re unresponsive, you’re going to the hospital,” Solomon said, “because your brain is essentially cooking.”
At this point, the heat has done irreversible damage that can leave the victim disabled for years to come. If internal temperatures don’t fall quickly, death becomes a very real possibility. Organs can fail within hours, killing the victim, even after their temperature starts to drop.
Heat illness can come on within just minutes or take hours to develop. “There’s kind of a weird phenomenon where there’s two times of day where we’ll get 911 calls for people who have fallen ill” due to heat sickness, Solomon said.
One is in the middle of the afternoon, when the heat is at its worst. The other is near 11 p.m. — visitors will feel OK during the day, but get increasingly dehydrated as they continue to exert themselves. “Then, they check into their hotel room and fall ill,” Solomon said.
In some extreme cases, heatstroke can overwhelm a person so fast that muscle cramps and other symptoms of heat exhaustion don’t have time to show. The Death Valley emergency response team typically gets about two or three heat illness calls per week in the summer, with visitors experiencing symptoms across the spectrum from mild fatigue to loss of consciousness.
Heatstroke experts overwhelmingly agree on the most effective treatment: cooling the patient as fast as possible.
“The key to survival is getting their body temperature under 104 within 30 minutes of the presentation of the condition,” said Douglas Casa, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut and the chief executive of the Korey Stringer Institute, a leading voice in treating heatstrokes. “It’s 100% survivability if you do that, which is amazing because there’s not too many life-threatening emergencies in the world that have 100% survivability if treated correctly.”
The fastest way to cool a patient is a cool ice bath, experts say. Hanson said his team in Texas will fly an ice bath on a helicopter and cool the victim in the middle of the desert until their temperature stabilizes before the medics even transport them.
However, in Death Valley, getting an ice bath to victims can be nearly impossible. The hot air is so thin that the team can’t fly helicopters. Instead, they bring a body bag and cool the victim inside with ice and cool towels as they’re transported via ambulance.
Although emergencies are regular, the park says they are preventable, and if people follow park guidance, they can experience the heat safely.
“It really is a reason why some people come to visit — because this is one of the few places on Earth where you can feel what that level of heat feels like,” said supervisory park ranger Jennette Jurado. “It’s our job as park rangers to do our very best to make sure people can have these experiences and then go home safely at the end of the day and remember these experiences.”
Visitors take a late-afternoon swim in the pool at Furnace Creek, where temperatures lingered in the 120s inside Death Valley National Park.
For Jurado, a safe visit looks like taking refuge in air conditioning during the hottest parts of the day and experiencing the heat in short five-minute intervals. The vast majority of visitors take this approach. If they hike at all, it’s early in the morning, and the car never leaves their sight. The rest of the day, they spend hanging at the hotel or by the pool — or they leave the park.
Although it might be possible for someone to — wrongly — convince themselves that a 90-degree heat wave in the city won’t affect them personally, it’s much harder to do that in a Death Valley heat wave.
Ironically, this makes Jurado worry more about cooler days in the park, when visitors may not be most on guard. When hikers died within days of each other a few years back, it was an unseasonably cool 105 degrees in the park.
“It’s that level of heat where people are like, ‘Oh, it’s not Death Valley hot, I can hike longer — I can take more risks,’” Jurado said.
With extremely hot temperatures blanketing the D.C. area, there are a few cardinal warning signs of heat-related ailments you should be on the lookout for.
“The first and foremost important thing to remember is that heat exhaustion, heatstroke, can be kind of sneaky,” said Dr. Neil Roy, chief medical officer at Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center and an emergency room physician.
There are a few cardinal warning signs of heat-related ailments.
The first one is feeling lightheaded, dizzy, or weak — or recognizing that your loved ones are confused or are acting differently from their baseline.
“As that progresses, confusion is a major red flag,” Roy said. “And then, when they stop sweating and their mouths become dry. Those are red flags for heat exhaustion, heat stroke.”
At the sign of any of these symptoms, “the first thing to do is get inside and start hydrating,” Roy said.
“If you’re outside or your loved one or your friends are outside, and now they’re saying, ‘Hey, I feel kind of lightheaded, I’m feeling a little dizzy.’ The first thing to do is go inside, remove yourself from the heat, and then hydrate,” Roy said. “After those two steps have been taken care of, and if the symptoms don’t go away, then I would seek medical attention.”
That’s especially important is someone is experiencing confusion, Roy said. In that case, he recommends calling 911 and having the person go to a hospital to get checked out.
“Once confusion and changes in your mental status have become really pronounced, those are the reasonable times to seek medical attention,” he said.
Roy said it’s important to think ahead if you’re going to be out in the heat.
“In advance, you want to hydrate with water or sports drinks fairly regularly. … You want to have one 8-ounce bottle of water every hour (that) you’re in the heat and more if you’re (exerting yourself),” Roy said. “Hydration is one of the major pillars in preventing both heat exhaustion and dehydration.”
Drinking alcohol, however, can worsen the effects.
“Drinking alcohol also minimizes your thirst drive,” Roy said. “Typically, we see people that are in their mid-20s or 30s, and they had been drinking beer outside, and they won’t recognize the heat come on. And when they come to the ER, they come in typically confused and their body temperature is very high.”
Hot weather is nothing to be trifled with. Don’t forget that car temperatures can go up very quickly and to not leave children or animals unattended in the car.
“I think the biggest take-home point is to take the heat seriously,” Roy said.
Our most vulnerable citizens
It’s especially important that people aged 65 and older, and children six years old and younger drink enough water when out in extreme heat. Roy said that heat related illnesses can be a particular risk to seniors and small children.
“As we get older and younger — the extremes of age — our needs change. Older patients … typically have a lower drive for thirst, meaning they’re not going to be thirsty the way they would be 20 years ago. So if you’re in the slightly older age category, hydrating more is really important because your body is not going to tell you that you’re dehydrated,” said Roy.
The same is true for children, so parents or guardians must ensure that small kids are properly hydrated when outdoors in the hot weather.
“Children under the age of five or six may not recognize when they’re thirsty in advance. They’ll be outside, running around playing, even swimming, and not drinking water and staying hydrated. So hydrating at a similar rate, with or without sports drinks plus water, is really important among the pillars of preventing both dehydration and heat exhaustion,” said Roy.
Seniors and small children are no strangers to the hospital emergency room during heat waves.
“We’ll see it in older patients that will come in not acting right, being confused, not behaving normally and have high body temperatures. And then there are pediatric patients — we’ll see 1, 2 or 3-year-olds that have been outside and their body temperatures have just risen, risen, risen,” said Roy.
WTOP’s Jack Moore contributed to this report.
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