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On Sept. 6, 2020, San Francisco hit 100 degrees — a rare event in the city’s recorded history.
Eight months pregnant, Alana Semuels baked in her west-facing apartment. The air outside smelled like a campfire. The haze swallowed the sun and blurred the outlines of Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge.
“It was like an oven,” she recalled. “One night, I got so desperate that I went outside to sleep on our deck chairs. It felt like the only place I could go to really breathe. I remember waking up with a fine layer of grit on the chairs and on me.”…