Description:

Join Mayor Brandon Johnson, the Chicago Department of Environment, and the Defusing Disasters Working Group for a special screening of a short excerpt from the award-winning documentary Cooked: Survival by Zip Code, directed by Judith Helfand. Mayor Johnson will provide opening remarks.

This powerful film explores the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which resulted in the loss of over 700 lives and exposed long-standing gaps in infrastructure, emergency response, and community preparedness in areas of the city facing systemic disinvestment.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion examining the lasting legacy of the heat wave, lessons from the film, and how the Chicago is working today—through research, community partnerships, and cross-sector collaboration—to proactively reduce the risks of extreme heat.

The discussion will also feature the City’s Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI), a new data-driven tool developed with Northwestern University and other partners, as well as presentation of a community-informed set of heat resilience policy recommendations designed to guide equitable planning, improve public health outcomes, and strengthen climate preparedness in Chicago’s most heat-vulnerable communities.