DEADLY HEAT

Death Valley Heat Kills Hiker Hours After Los Angeles Times Interview

Steve Curry, 71, called the extreme temps at Death Valley a “dry heat” in a story published Wednesday. He died on Tuesday.

A hiker in California’s Death Valley died Tuesday just hours after he was interviewed by a Los Angeles Times reporter and photographed for a story that published the next morning, SF Gate reports. Steve Curry, 71, of Los Angeles, is believed to have died from heat exhaustion while visiting the national park, which has experienced near-record high temperatures this month. Curry told the Times that the extreme temps—up to 121 degrees this week—were a “dry heat” and that he’d hiked from Golden Canyon to Zabriskie Point that morning. As of Friday morning, the Times story, headlined “116 degrees at night: Death Valley’s extreme heat goes off the charts from climate change,” made no mention of Curry’s death or that of a 65-year-old man who died from the heat earlier this month, but the paper did publish a separate story about Curry on Friday. It also featured no warning about being outside in the deadly heat—despite interviewing “intrepid tourists” attempting to weather the extreme climate.