A sixth person is suspected of dying from heat during recording-breaking temperatures earlier this week.
Multnomah County officials said on Saturday that they are investigating another death that was reported Friday. The person died in North Portland, according to the Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office.
It is the sixth death with heat as the suspected cause in the last week, but further testing must be done to confirm the preliminary findings, officials said. They have not identified any of the people.
The first person died Monday in Southeast Portland when the temperature reached 106. The next day, an unnamed Portland hospital reported that another person had died when the temperature was 102. A third person was found dead Wednesday in Northeast Portland when the temperature was about 102. The fourth person was found dead Thursday in Northeast Portland when the temperature was about 92 degrees. The fifth person was found dead Friday in Northeast Portland.
Officials have not released additional information about the circumstances of the deaths.
City and county officials declared a heat emergency Sunday due to excessive heat and opened three cooling centers in Gresham and Portland through Wednesday.
Monday’s recorded temperature at Portland International Airport was 108 — the hottest on record for August since records have been kept there. The previous record was 107 in 1981.
Temperatures at the airport rose to 102 on Tuesday, 103 on Wednesday and 93 on Thursday.
Five people died from exposure to heat last summer, when temperatures soared into the 90s and above for eight consecutive days in July and in several shorter stretches in August.
The deaths are a grim reminder of June 2021, when a heat dome killed 116 people in Oregon, 69 of whom were in Multnomah County.
— The Oregonian/OregonLive