José Guerrero’s telephone buzzes from morning to midnight with sweaty pleas for assist: The air-conditioner fan simply stop. My grandma is caught in a 90-degree home. My youngsters are overheating. Please come, it’s so scorching.

As Phoenix slogs by way of a record 20 straight days of 110-degree or higher temperatures, Mr. Guerrero, 33, has emerged as possibly essentially the most important employee in a city determined to remain cool: the A.C. restore man.

“We live in a city where you have to have it,” he mentioned. “If they need us, we go.”

Summer is at all times his busy season, however air-conditioner service corporations across the Southwest are seeing voracious demand — a results of record-breaking temperatures searing the country from Florida to California, compounded by a scarcity of expert technicians and tools.

So now, Mr. Guerrero, his two brothers and their father roll out seven days per week, heading for suffocating attics and tar-shingled rooftops throughout the Valley of the Sun to coax ailing air-conditioners again to life. They repair leaking refrigerant strains, exchange burned-out capacitors and attempt to decrease Phoenix’s temperature just a few levels.

But conserving town cool is sweltering work. They endure the warmth by guzzling water and wrapping moist cloths round their necks, and attempt to keep away from burning their fingers on scalding sheet metallic or fainting inside crawl areas the place they are saying temperatures can soar to 150 levels.

“We call it going to sleep,” José Guerrero mentioned. “It’s bad up there.”

The males use thermometers to gauge temperatures inside houses and around the machinery, which often soar well past the outdoor air. “163 degrees in the attic,” Edi Guerrero, 30, one other brother, reported after coming dwelling drenched in sweat one afternoon.

Most white-collar staff round Phoenix have hunkered inside their air-conditioned properties or icy workplaces.

But about 20 % of Arizona’s staff spend their days outdoors, based on an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, harvesting crops and powering Arizona’s development by constructing new roads, semiconductor factories and condos.

The state legislature has rejected efforts to jot down warmth protections into regulation, however this week, Gov. Katie Hobbs mentioned her administration would ship inspectors to verify whether or not staff have entry to enough water, shade and relaxation within the excessive warmth.

On Saturday, the youngest Guerrero brother, Alex, 22, spent the 116-degree afternoon checking air-conditioners at an condominium advanced when he felt his breath quicken and his eyes droop. He requested his girlfriend to drive him dwelling, and when he staggered inside, he known as out for his mom. and collapsed.

“Next thing I knew, I was on the ground,” he mentioned.

The household known as 911 and as they waited for paramedics to reach, they knew from expertise to chill him down with moist cloths and gave him sips of a sports activities drink. A half-hour later, he sat shirtless contained in the household’s cell dwelling, shaky however recovering: “It was just too damn hot.”

The Guerreros by no means deliberate for air-conditioning to change into the household trade.

Roberto Guerrero, 51, who immigrated from Chihuahua, Mexico, to Phoenix 30 years in the past, mentioned it was a second profession after a sudden sickness in 2008 left him paralyzed. During an agonizing three-year restoration, as he realized to stroll and decide up spoons once more, the household’s financial savings had been drained, they usually had been evicted.

“I needed to do something,” Mr. Guerrero mentioned.

He initially tried to promote air-conditioning items, however mentioned he realized that whereas few folks needed to purchase, everybody wanted repairs.

José mentioned he joined his father after dropping his company job with a supply app through the pandemic. The elder Mr. Guerrero nonetheless walks with a slight limp, so climbing to the roof, the place most residential air-conditioners sit, is treacherous even with the safety of a robust rope.

The mother and father, siblings and three of José’s youngsters dwell collectively in a drafty cell dwelling on the Sun ‘n Sand trailer park on the edge of an interstate in northwest Phoenix. They eat homemade enchiladas and watch television crammed around a kitchen table, talking over the day’s jobs and joking about who wilts quickest within the warmth.

They personal their cell dwelling, however José and Roberto say they dream about shopping for some land manner west of Phoenix, the place they’ll elevate chickens and horses and plant fruit bushes, like their family members in Chihuahua.

They are weary of patching up the cell dwelling, and are nonetheless fixing a flimsy roof that peeled off in a windstorm months in the past. They just lately changed their wheezing previous window A.C. unit with a brand new wall-mounted one.

And dwelling within the nation, José mentioned, would possibly give him an excuse to disregard the service calls pinging his telephone on weekends.

Sometimes, the Guerreros fear they don’t seem to be charging sufficient. Repairs can run from $500 for a comparatively easy repair, to $10,000 for a brand new unit, and most of their prospects can not afford practically that a lot.

They say they find yourself knocking a whole lot of {dollars} off restore payments for struggling prospects, taking fruit or selfmade meals as an alternative. The different day, a consumer whose home hit greater than 100 levels slipped $100 into Jose’s hand, and requested him to do what he might. When one other buyer couldn’t afford the labor prices of putting in an electrical half, José mentioned he supplied to stroll him by way of it on FaceTime.

“It’s the reason we’re poor, but we’re happy,” the elder Mr. Guerrero mentioned.

On a pre-dawn Tuesday morning, it was already 93 levels when José and his father pulled as much as a house in a working-class neighborhood within the Phoenix suburb of Mesa.

The buyer, Nestor Flores, a roofer, had known as the Guerreros when his June electrical invoice hit $570. His leaky rooftop air-conditioning unit had been operating continually at full pace whereas solely burping out tepid air, making the home so swampy that his three youngsters had began spending summer season days with their grandparents. He mentioned José had charged him 1000’s lower than different restore corporations.

“He’s cutting me a break,” Mr. Flores mentioned.

José was already sweating by way of his work shirt as he clambered up a ladder, steadied by his father, and onto the roof spangled with chook poop. He pulled out a drill and undid the bolts holding the 500-pound unit in place.

He needed to work quick. Other calls had been coming in, and the temperature had simply zoomed above 100. In an hour, the roof can be a skillet.

Later that afternoon, Phoenix formally broke its file for the longest stretch ever of 110-degree days. It was large news for climate geeks and news shops throughout the area, and for the Guerreros, a reminder of much more depressing weeks forward.

“We’ve been here all our lives,” José mentioned. “You don’t get used to it.”