Senior citizens and extreme weather: How to help them prepare and stay safe

Severe weather situations can be stressful events, especially to some of the most vulnerable individuals in our communities including the elderly. Older individuals may not be aware of severe conditions or have the means to seek shelter, so having a plan and support system could make the difference when it comes to life and death situations.

On this week's episode, Dr. Lauren Southerland joins the podcast to explain why hazardous weather like heat, wildfire smoke and hurricanes often takes a greater toll on senior citizens. She also discusses what you can do to help keep your loved ones safe and what societal changes should be made to deal with an aging population and climate change.

Dr. Southerland is an emergency medicine physician at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center and clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at the Ohio State University College of Medicine. Southerland, who is passionate about helping older adults maintain healthy, independent lives, specializes in geriatric emergency medicine.

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About the Across the Sky podcast

The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team:

Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia.

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Episode transcript

Note: The following transcript was created by Headliner and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:

Weathering the Storm: Senior Safety in Severe Weather

Across the sky podcast features experts on hurricane preparedness for senior citizens

Joe Martucci: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the across the sky podcast. We Enterprise's National Weather Podcast. I am Meteorologist Joe Martucci, based here in New Jersey. We have Sean Sublette over at the Richmond Times Dispatch. We have Matt Holiner, based in Chicagoland, and Kirsten Lang over in Tulsa. For this week's episode, we are talking about see preparedness when it comes to our senior residents and our listeners here on the across the sky podcast, we have Dr. Lauren Sutherland from the got to Remember to Z, Ohio State University to talk about this very topic. This is something I've actually done a story on in the past in regards to Superstorm Sandy in 2012 in New Jersey about how just kind of the challenges that our senior friends have when it comes to evacuating, when there are hurricane evacuations. But we get to much more than that.

Dr. Lauren Sutherland discusses what types of weather older adults worry about

Joe Martucci: Sean, Matt, Kirsten, what did you guys get out of this podcast, that we had with Lauren?

Sean Sublette: Yeah, it was really good to hear from her what types of weather she gets most concerned about. Right. Because there's all kinds of damaging severe weather hurricane, ice storm, winter storm, tornadoes, floods. So, it was interesting because her answer surprised me, but at the same time, it kind of gave me a little reassurance that we're moving in the right direction in terms of getting the right messages across.

Matt Holiner: And I think it's easy to look at the disaster preparedness, like, how do you seniors handle when you're talking about these big events, a landfalling hurricane or a major severe weather outbreak? But it's also worth noting that the other types of weather that impact seniors differently than younger adults, and we got into that talking about how seniors are more impacted by cold air outbreaks, heat waves, and air quality. We talk about that category that we often mention unhealthy for sensitive groups. Well, who's included in those sensitive groups? Older adults. And so we talk about that and why older adults are more susceptible to things like air pollution.

Sean Sublette: Yeah.

Kirsten Lang: And she also gives good advice for those who may have aging parents as well, and how to keep them safe during these times of events.

Joe Martucci: Well said, everyone. And without further ado, we're going to present Dr. Lauren Sutherland.