Hana Kiros

Since September 29, when the smell of chlorine first began to waft over metro Atlanta, Georgia residents’ lives have been upended by an enormous chemical fire. That day, a chemical plant containing millions of pounds of pool sanitizer burned to the ground in Conyers, Georgia. The blaze was extinguished in hours, but an enormous plume of orange and black smoke remained for days, so thick that drivers on Interstate 20 struggled to see past their windshield.

This year, just like last year, the nearly 200,000 kids in Chicago’s public elementary schools spent recess indoors during the first week of school, when the heat index hit 114 degrees. In the past few weeks, outdoor activities were canceled at schools in and around Washington, D.C., where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees last month, and in Southern California too.