Wilmer Vasquez was a gregarious extrovert."He was very outgoing person," remembers his ex-girlfriend Rose Carvajal. He died in 2023 at just 29 years old after working outside as a roofer in record-breaking August heat in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.It wasn’t that they were so similar. Wilmer, the younger one, was an extrovert. “He just wanted to be around people,” Yonatan says. “He was always encouraging people, making sure they were doing good. He liked to be the center of attention.
Despite their differences, both brothers ended up in the roofing business. Their father had also been a roofer, as were multiple uncles, so it was kind of the family profession. Although Yonatan says he wishes it wasn’t. And in places where there’s a lot of humidity, like Florida, conditions can quickly become deadly. That’s what killed Wilmer last summer, Yonatan says. He worries he could be next.
Like his brother Wilmer, Yonatan Vasquez works as a roofer in South Florida. He says the weather often gets dangerously hot in the summer and he experiences dehydration, muscle cramps and other signs of heat illness.Last July and August were the hottest ever recorded in South Florida. The heat index, which incorporates both temperature and humidity, wasOn August 21, 2023, both Yonatan and Wilmer went to work as usual. Yonatan remembers it was a humid day, with temperatures in the 90s.
Wilmer’s condition worsened overnight, and he died at the hospital the next morning. Yonatan was his brother’s emergency contact, so he was the first to find out.Yonatan Vasquez worries that dangerously hot weather could take his life like it took his brother's.