On Saturday, we mourned the one-year anniversary of Jose Macarena Hernandez' death due to extreme heat. A veteran field worker, Jose died during record-breaking heat while harvesting squash in Santa Maria. Temperatures that day reached 110 degrees. Jose was found in the outhouse, his body blistered from the heat.
At a press conference before his funeral services, his niece, Maria Elena Curiel, expressed her frustration to a local TV station."We have a lot of unanswered questions that no one has come forth. The employer has not contacted us to at least explain the situation, what was going on that day, was he not feeling well." She went on to say, "We surely hope that he didn't suffer very long to the point where he was feeling all this going on with his body that he was cooking basically underneath this heat."