PARIS (AP) – Hot, hotter, hottest! Paris, London and points across Europe braced for record temperatures yesterday as the second heat wave this summer bakes the continent.
Climate scientists warn this could become the new normal. But temperate Europe – where air conditioning is rare – isn’t equipped for the kind of temperatures frying the region this week.
So tourists are frolicking in fountains to seek relief and authorities are fanning out to help the elderly, sick and homeless hit hardest by the heat.
The Paris area was as hot as 42oC yesterday as a result of hot, dry air coming from northern Africa that’s trapped between cold stormy systems.
London saw 39oC and swaths of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland faced temperatures exceeding 40oC.
And this is only the latest of several hot days: Germany recorded its all-time record high on Wednesday, 40.5 degrees in the western town of Geilenkirchen near the Belgian border.
The record is likely going to be very short-lived, however – the German Weather Service noted even higher temperatures yesterday.
Across London, authorities started handing out water and sunscreen to homeless people and opened day centres for them to rest and shower.
Tourists clustered around fountains and canals in Paris. “It’s too hot. In Brazil, where I live, we have the beach but here, since there is no beach, we can enjoy this fountain,” said Ederson Lista-Vajes, a Brazilian tourist playing with spurts of water at Trocadero plaza across from the Eiffel Tower.
France is particularly on alert after a 2003 heat wave killed nearly 15,000 people, especially the elderly.
Since then the government has introduced a colour-coded heat alert system to warn people when temperatures are expected to rise to dangerous levels in their area and trigger government assistance efforts.
