How to Survive a Sizzling Summer Work Day Outside: Water, Water, Water

So how do you not melt if you have to work outside on steamy days like yesterday and today?

Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate, said mail carrier Tim Kearney. Looking cool, Kearney was delivering mail to the building at 576 Main St.  “I’m sweating,” he said.

When the temperature reaches a certain mark, the Postal Service provides water for its mail carriers, Kearney said.  “They don’t usually do that,” he said, because it usually isn’t this hot.  People will sometimes offer him water or soda, the seven-year mail veteran said.

When he moves from foot to delivery vehicle, he gets no blast of air conditioning. The trucks are like “an ice box in winter,” he said, and like “an easy bake oven” in summer.  When he leaves the vehicle to deliver mail, he can only leave the window open a crack, he said, to keep the contents of the truck secure. With some mail carriers taking vacation in the summer, he may have to work an extra hour a day, he said, to cover for them.

As soon as he got home after work yesterday, Kearney said he was going “right into the shower.”

The temperature on the rubber roof of the O’Brien Ice Rink was around 112 degrees yesterday, according to Larry Perry, foreman of the roofing crew from Reliable Roofing of Framingham, which is redoing the roof on the rink and the adjacent . He agreed with Kearney about drinking more water and giving his crew more water breaks.

To head off the heat a little bit, Perry said the crew was going to start work around 5 a.m. this morning, instead of 6:30.  The crew can’t just not work when it gets really hot, Perry said. “I get a light bill every month,” he said, and he has to pay it.

Woburn Police Patrolman Bob DeNapoli credited the breeze with keeping the temperature tolerable as he directed traffic around a water pipe-cleaning project at the top of Warren Avenue. The 16-year police force veteran is more a fan of summer than winter, he said. “Winter stunk,” he said bluntly. His wife, however, doesn’t like the heat, he said. Shade kept him a little cooler, he said, while he worked at the bottom of the hill.

Like Perry and Kearney, DeNapoli recommended drinking lots of water in the heat.

At the tennis courts off Montvale Avenue, Stephen Sullivan, varsity tennis and varsity girls’ basketball coach, led a group of youths through their paces.  All recreation department activities were cancelled today, including the last day of the tennis program, he told the students, because of the heat. More water breaks than usual were mandatory, he told Woburn Patch, every 10 to 15 minutes.

Outside the tennis courts, dad Emad Qasrawi sat and watched his son, Bassam, 10, and daughter, Hana, 8,  practice. As soon as the lesson was over, they were heading, Emad said, to water—a private pool.

School custodian Tom Lamson was cleaning lockers in the girls’ locker room at the high school with no air conditioning in the athletic sections of the building, he said, even the gym. Walking from the air-conditioned section into the non-air-conditioned section felt like hitting a wall.

No residents took the opportunity to cool off in the air-conditioned high school yesterday afternoon, around 2 o’clock.

Outside the independent living center on Warren Avenue, Ruth Tekirian said she went out onto the covered porch in the early afternoon to check the temperature. Usually the seats beside her are filled, she said. Not yesterday afternoon.

Fellow resident Kay Costello headed from the porch into the air-conditioned building. “I always sit outside,” Costello said. But not yesterday.  “Feels like 100” outside, she said.