Top Stories

NEW YORK (AP) ― It can be a lethal mix: heat, age and poverty.

As the temperature inched past 100 degrees on Wednesday, more than 13,000 elderly New Yorkers were receiving emergency boxes of shelf-stable foods and extra water to sustain them through the heat wave.

"It's bad. I feel dizzy, and I'm shaking," said retired dressmaker Josephine DiGiovanni, 93, leaning on her cane to venture from her air-conditioned bedroom to a sweltering but spotless kitchen, where workers from a city-run senior center arrived with the sustenance.

DiGiovanni receives a regular meal every weekday through the city-funded Meals on Wheels program. On weekends, holidays and during emergencies -- like life-threatening heat -- a nonprofit partner called Citymeals-on-Wheels brings supplies and equally important human contact to people who can't leave their homes.

On Wednesday, the clients received their regular lunch plus a three-day emergency supply of meals.

When Maria Suarez arrived with her delivery, DiGiovanni dropped her key from her window, then opened the door to welcome her.

"Everybody's so good to me. They don't want me to do anything," said a tearful DiGiovanni, who lives on about $600 a month. Opening her box of supplies, she pulled out the milk and joyously exclaimed in Italian: "Latte!"

"Are you sure you're drinking enough?" Suarez asked DiGiovanni, touching her skin to test her body temperature.

Citymeals was started in 1981 by food critic Gael Greene and the chef James Beard.

"Our elderly, homebound neighbors are particularly susceptible to the deleterious effects of summer heat," said Citymeals executive director Marcia Stein, explaining that as a person gets older, the body's "internal thermostat wears out."

Elderly people -- 65 or older, as defined by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- are more prone to heat stress because their bodies do not adjust well to sudden changes in temperature; they may have a chronic medical condition that upsets normal body responses to heat, or may be on medication that impairs the body's ability to regulate its temperature.

The most serious heat-related illness is heat stroke, when the body's temperature rises rapidly, accompanied by dizziness or nausea, causing death or permanent disability if emergency treatment is not provided.

The emergency nutrition boxes contain three low-sodium, low-sugar shelf-stable meals, including juices and milk, energy bars, canned tuna and vegetables.

The beneficiaries are mostly "fragile, vulnerable, isolated and very old," said Stein. She said most are 85 and over -- and about 100 are over a century old. About three-quarters live alone, about that many are women, and 40 percent live on incomes of $9,000 a year or less.

On Wednesday, some of the boxes were loaded into a van operated by the Ridgewood Bushwick Senior Center, where air-conditioned respite also is available to anyone who is mobile and needs cooling.

A walk away from DiGiovanni's apartment in Queens' Ridgewood neighborhood, Ed Butcher awaited his box at an open window of his street-level apartment, its curtain pulled back. With only two small fans cooling the air inside, he spent hours sitting in his easy chair by the window.

"I ain't got nowhere to do," said Butcher, smiling as he reached for the packages. Sixty-four and on disability from his job at the Belmont racetrack after a road accident, he lives on a $752 monthly check; his wife died last year.

Butcher does occasionally leave the house to do errands, but not in such heat.

The delivered food meant that Frank Smith, who has a heart condition, would not have to walk outdoors to a store. But the 68-year-old retired messenger was waiting on his doorstep when the van arrived.

"This helps," he said as he went back into his house, cooled only by window fans.

Edwin MÄendez-Santiago, commissioner of the city Department for the Aging, said 230 senior centers are serving as cooling centers throughout the city. While the centers typically are open from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., he said, "We have 163 that will be open up to 8 p.m. and 65 across the city that will be open till 11 tonight. We encourage our seniors to make use of this."

He said the Visiting Nurse Services and other agencies are checking in on homebound seniors but neighbors need to also.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)