Movies, Pools and Shade Offer Respite From Heat

It was hot Saturday, no doubt about it.

Chatsworth tied a record high 104 degrees for July 18. And though not record-setting for the day, Northridge hit 105 and Van Nuys hovered at 100.

Three days into a heat wave, the San Fernando Valley saw little relief. Still, it wasn’t quite as blistering as meteorologists had predicted, and this week the intense heat should ease at least a little.

By Tuesday or Wednesday, temperatures should drop to the mid-90s, said Jeff House, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. But even House was hard-pressed to call that much of an improvement.

“I think ‘less hot’ is closer to the truth than ‘cooler,’ ” he said.

Most of the weather-related emergency medical calls Saturday were from people attending Aviation Expo 98 at Van Nuys Airport, where more than two dozen people were treated for heat exhaustion, said Brian Humphrey, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Citywide, people sought places to cool off. The Department of Water and Power reported a 10% increase in power usage Saturday and said brief outages affected about 100 customers in Los Angeles.

In San Fernando Valley parks, families clustered in the shade, spreading blankets and settling in for a long, hot afternoon.

At Canoga Park High School, three men napped near the front stairs in the shadow of a leafy tree.

Just down the street at Lanark Park, two little boys stood in street clothes with their noses stuck through the chain-link fence surrounding the pool, looks of longing on their faces.

Other local residents were looking to get inside.

A few hours in an icy, artificially-cooled movie theater is an American summer ritual. Air conditioning was invented in 1902, but it wasn’t until 1922 that Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles became the first movie palace in the country to install it.

Eileen Maddis of Encino is all too familiar with taking advantage of air conditioning at the movies. For her, the tradition started years ago when she was growing up in Chicago and did not know anyone who had air conditioning. On Saturday she was at the AMC Promenade in Woodland Hills.

“I either go to the movies or go swimming when it’s like this,” said the silver-haired woman.

Outside Pacific Theatres in Chatsworth, people in a line to see “The Mask of Zorro” were eager to go inside. With a dark green umbrella shading her from the sun, Cheryl Quark of Porter Ranch said she was becoming a regular at the theater on hot days.

“It’s cool inside, and there’s only so much swimming we can do,” said Quark, who was there with her husband and their 8-year-old daughter.

But getting out of the heat did not necessarily require purchasing a movie ticket.

Senior centers in Los Angeles extended their hours this weekend as part of the city’s response to the heat wave. The centers were open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and will be open again during the same hours today.

But Jim Angelier, who was on duty Saturday at the Wilkinson Senior Center in Northridge, said it had been a lonely day.

“The response has been terrible,” he said. “I think I’ve had six people all day for a total of 20 minutes.”