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Many workers also live in housing that farmers provide, much of it not air conditioned and, sometimes, not equipped with fans. Those workers may never properly cool off, said Alex Jones, the North Carolina director of the National Farmworker Ministry.

"A lot of times, workers are in barracks or in trailers," Jones said. "These are metal buildings. It's like an oven inside, essentially."

Refusing to rest

In most cases that the Labor Department documented, there is no evidence that workers were denied water or breaks. In some cases, the workers had health problems.

Rito Mesa Castillo, who died in July 2005, was in his 50s and overweight -- both factors that make heatstroke worse. The farmer told Labor Department inspectors that he had no choice but to allow Castillo to harvest tobacco, because Castillo's contract as a migrant worker guaranteed him work. The farmer was fined $1,500 for the death.

In other deaths, workers ignored their bosses' entreaties to rest.

Jaen Mario Meneses was harvesting sweet potatoes in October 2005, his second day on the job. He became ill and, despite being told to sit down, continued working. He eventually staggered off the field and was unconscious before an ambulance arrived. The farmer was fined $500.

In virtually every case, both the workers and the farmer appeared unaware of the signs of heatstroke. None got immediate medical care for their symptoms.

Castillo was left for at least an hour under a tree next to the field. Meneses was told to go sit in a bus, labor records show.

Buzzards circling

Ordaz, holding his head and unable to work, was allowed to walk alone to the trailer he shared with other workers, nearly half a mile away, on a day when the heat index reached 103 degrees, Labor Department documents show.

The next day, workers told their employer that Ordaz wasn't there. Farmer Danny Walker called his labor supplier to request another worker, saying Ordaz had "run off," records show.

Ordaz's fellow workers found his body more than three days later, when they saw buzzards circling.

The workers later told inspectors that Walker allowed them only one five-minute break and a one-hour lunch during workdays that stretched past 10 hours. They said he berated them for taking too long to drink water, records show.

Walker, of Roxboro, was fined $4,125. His lawyer, Joe Weinberger of Roxboro, declined to comment, and efforts to reach Walker failed. In his letters to the Labor Department, Weinberger said Walker believed that Ordaz had a heart attack unrelated to the heat.

Because Ordaz's body was found too late, the coroner could not confirm that he died of heatstroke, but there was no other obvious cause of death, records show. The Labor Department counts his death among the heat-related fatalities.

Leticia Zavala, of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, a union to which Ordaz belonged, said Ordaz came to North Carolina hoping to earn enough to build a house for his wife, his son and his unborn baby.

Instead, Zavala said, his wife had to take a low-paying factory job to cover the cost of his burial, along with that of his infant son, who died a few months after birth.

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