New York City activates heat emergency plan, opens more than 500 cooling centers as heat index hits 112

New York City heat emergency plan cooling centers open this week

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani activated the New York City Heat Emergency Plan on June 29, 2026, opening more than 500 cooling centers across the city as forecasters warned the heat index could climb toward 112 degrees, a measure of how hot the air actually feels once humidity is added to the thermometer reading. New York City Emergency Management has activated this same standing plan more than once already in 2026, so this was not the first time the plan has been used. What was new this week was a set of tools layered onto it. The city rolled out Cooling Outreach On Location vans, called COOL vans, mobile units staffed by medical providers that travel to where people need help, and reprogrammed more than 2,200 LinkNYC kiosks, the information screens on city sidewalks, to show real time walking directions to the nearest cooling center.

How many New Yorkers heat kills each year

Every summer, about 500 New Yorkers die of heat related causes, according to the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Commissioner Alister Martin put the number in his own words at the mayor press conference the next day.

Our data shows that every summer, approximately 500 New Yorkers die of heat-related causes.

Doctor Alister Martin, Commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Source 2.

The mayor repeated the same figure himself later in that same press conference, when a reporter asked whether the city would publish real time heat death data during the event. He did not commit to doing so. The National Weather Service separately warned the heat index could reach as high as 111 degrees from Wednesday through Friday, close to but not identical to the 112 degrees the city itself named on 2 separate days, the figure this article uses.

What is new for outdoor workers this week

The city expanded its pop up cooling stations for outdoor workers from 2 last year to 7 this year, more than 3 times as many. More than 600 street outreach workers and 18 Department of Homeless Services nurses are checking on people directly this week. The full transcript of the June 30 press conference, not any of the written releases the city posted, is where the sharpest operational detail surfaces. It shows the New York City Department for the Aging runs 280 of its cooling centers on weekdays and only 210 on weekends, so a center that is open on a Tuesday may be closed on a Saturday during the same heat wave.

What the July 1 expansion adds

Two days later, on July 1, the city expanded the response again. It opened 8 additional city buildings and 10 additional public library branches as cooling centers, extended pool hours a further half hour to 8 30 in the evening, and added 150 more outreach volunteers. The city says it is running 21 COOL vans, and its Department of Consumer and Worker Protection and Department of Health and Mental Hygiene together have notified more than 75,000 businesses and worksites that they must let outdoor and indoor workers cool down and rest. For a New Yorker deciding what to do this week, the nearest cooling center, the LinkNYC kiosk on the corner, and the extended pool hours are the plan working in practice, not just an announcement.