Extreme Heat Is the New Normal | Op-Docs

We filmed “A New Inferno,” the short documentary above, in Phoenix, one of the hottest cities in America, through some of the city’s hottest days of 2025, during one of the hottest years on record globally. On one of our production days, temperatures reached 118 while we were filming outside. In the face of extreme heat, we documented firefighters and paramedics of the Phoenix Fire Department saving lives in real time. We wanted to call attention to a specialized technique of ice bag immersion for people facing life-threatening heat stroke. We hope that telling their story and showcasing the efficacy of this strategy will encourage wider adoption of this protocol across the country. Yet this procedure is ultimately a stopgap, as firefighters do their best to adapt to the climate crisis in front of them. The underlying story of heat in Phoenix is one of broader, interlocking crises: homelessness and substance use disorders that are deeply entangled with urban heat, each amplifying the other, illustrating how climate change affects the disenfranchised most brutally. With our film, we aim to reframe how the public thinks about heat: as an invisible, silent killer reshaping the rhythms of urban life. Documentary and text by By Nita Blum-Reddick and Jonathan Pickett More from Op-Docs: https://www.nytimes.com/column/op-docs Subscribe: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7n 0:00 Phoenix is only getting hotter 2:06 ‘The feedback loop of nightmares’ 3:53 Ice bag immersion training simulation 7:40 How firefighters respond to heat-related emergencies 12:55 ‘He was really close. He was at that threshold.’ 14:40 Facing a warming world