“The temperature was going up over the course of that hour,” Todd Lericos, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told the Desert Sun.

It’s unclear why the three children were being punished, but authorities allege that the children’s mother and her boyfriend left them outside in Twentynine Palms, Calif.

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Mary Bell, 34, and her boyfriend, Gary Cassle, 29, have been arrested for felony child abuse, the sheriff’s department said. The two are being held at the Morongo Basin Jail on $100,000 bail.

San Bernardino County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Cynthia Bachman told the Associated Press that while the children were in sight of the adults, “it was apparent they weren’t keeping a visual on them.”

Bachman said the children had been wandering for about 45 minutes before someone saw them near a road and called authorities, the Associated Press reported. They didn’t need medical attention, she added.

The children, mother and boyfriend live in a car not far from where the children were found, the Los Angeles Times reported.

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Infants, children, those older than 65 and those with chronic medical conditions are especially at-risk for developing heat stress. Between 1999 and 2010, at least 7,415 died in the United States due to extreme heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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“People suffer heat-related illness when their bodies are unable to compensate and properly cool themselves,” according to the CDC. “The body normally cools itself by sweating. But under some conditions, sweating just isn’t enough.”

Young and healthy individuals can also get sick or die from heat if they are engaged in strenuous physical activity in hot weather.

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