Texas Workers Keep Dying in the Heat

Eighteen-year-old Danny Nolasco spent the day of July 15, 2024, mixing and hauling buckets of cement at a construction site in stifling heat.

The neighborhood of sprawling four- and five-bedroom houses, west of the Austin suburb of Bee Cave, was worlds away from the small mountain town in Honduras where Nolasco grew up. He had come to Texas two years earlier, hoping for a better life, and was working in his free time while attending school.

The crew started work at 9 a.m. and plowed through the day, breaking only once, for lunch. By the afternoon the temperature had reached 99 degrees, with a heat index of 104.

Shortly after 6 p.m., Nolasco collapsed. Other workers called 911 but when emergency medical providers arrived, they were not able to revive him. He died on the scene.

“It all happened so fast,” said Grevin Hernández, Nolasco’s uncle. “We never got a clear explanation of what happened to him.”

The Travis County medical examiner listed his cause of death as “undetermined” and found no underlying health issues.


https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24112025/texas-worker-heat-deaths/