Heat wave blamed for deaths in Texas, La.

Published 3:38 pm Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Scorching heat blamed for at least 13 deaths in Texas and another in Louisiana blanketed more of the Southeast on Wednesday, stretching government warnings of dangerous, triple-digit temperatures eastward into Mississippi and Tennessee.

Among the heat’s casualties was a man who died late Sunday in Shreveport, Louisiana, the second heat-related death in the state in an unusually warm June. The 49-year-old from neighboring Bossier City had been found lying on a sidewalk in Shreveport, where Sunday’s temperature hit 97 degrees — 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the average for the date.

The death of a 62-year-old woman on June 21 in Keithville also was blamed on heat. Relatives found her after she had spent several days without electricity because of earlier severe storms, the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office said.

In southeast Louisiana, the National Weather Service office in Slidell issued an excessive heat warning on June 16, the earliest in the year it’s ever done so for that area, a meteorologist said.