Toward the end of the school day on Wednesday, Alicia O’Callaghan received a call from Lockview Elementary School to pick up her daughter. She was told that her kindergartener wasn’t acting like herself.
Immediately, the St. Catharines mom thought it was weather-related, with Niagara enveloped in a heat wave — temperatures with humidex values factored in ranged from the mid-30s to mid-40s C.
“Sure enough, her body temperature was very high, she was very lethargic, she was complaining that her head hurt and she was nauseous,” said O’Callaghan. “Those seem like signs of heat stress.”