The Associated Press
NEW YORK CITY — At least 20 people died because of the heat that scorched the city this week, the medical examiner’s office said Saturday.
The medical examiner certified 10 deaths as being caused by the heat wave in addition to the 10 it had reported Friday. The toll could rise as additional autopsies are performed.
The more recent autopsy results were those of two residents of the Brooklyn borough and eight in Queens. The six women and four men ranged in age from 52 to 99, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office.
The new death reports came a day after cooler air settled over much of the East, bringing relief from a heat wave that had contributed to more than 200 deaths nationwide.
Temperatures were in the 80s in New York on Saturday after three days of blistering heat.
In the Chicago area, the Cook County medical examiner’s office said Saturday that the heat had killed at least 21 people.
In Madison County, Ill., the death of an 80-year-old man was attributed Friday to the heat. His body was found Thursday in his house, in which an air conditioning unit was turned off and the temperature was 96 degrees, officials said.
In Philadelphia, the medical examiner’s office reported four more heat-related fatalities, all discovered Thursday, bringing to nine the total number of deaths in the city from the recent hot weather.
Three of the victims were found in their homes, with heat stress listed as a factor in their deaths. The fourth person died in a hospital of hypothermia and diabetes.