In a historic heatwave that covered the Pacific Northwest in June 2021, two workers died.

Sebastian Francisco Perez, a 38-year-old Guatemalan immigrant, collapsed in 100-degree heat while moving irrigation lines outside at a farm and nursery in St. Paul, south of Portland. Just 500 miles away, a few days later, Ian Booth, a 33-year-old Idahoan working on a landscaping crew near Lewiston, Idaho, died of cardiac arrest from heat exposure.