Northwest heat wave: Tragedy strikes immigrant family again

On his 38th birthday, Sebastian Francisco Perez, an immigrant from Guatemala, played chess with his nephew

ST. PAUL, Ore. -- On his 38th birthday, Sebastian Francisco Perez, an immigrant from Guatemala, played chess with his nephew. The next day, he went to work at a nursery in a rural Oregon town as the thermometer soared well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8 Celsius). Perez collapsed that day, June 26, as a heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest in all-time record-high temperatures. The workers had been moving irrigation lines when they noticed Perez wasn't there and found him. They called his nephew, Pedro Lucas, who arrived to find his uncle unconscious and dying. Paramedics tried to revive him, but Perez didn't make it. A database of the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Division listed his death as heat-related. Hundreds of people are believed to have died from Friday to Tuesday in the historic heat wave that hit Oregon, Washington state and British Columbia. The death of Perez underscores the dangers that farm workers, most of them immigrants, face as they work under the hot sun, driving rain and snow, often packed in vans to travel to job sites.