A deadly European heatwave that has seen temperatures soar to record highs was expected to shift east.
At least 55 people have drowned in France amid the heatwave, the country’s sports minister said this morning, warning the death toll could rise further.
“Yesterday evening we were at 55, but we fear that the situation may worsen,” Sports Minister Marina Ferrari told broadcaster franceinfo.
Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu said earlier this week that 40 people – many of them young – had drowned since June 18, many while swimming in unauthorised places to escape the searing heat.
Scientists said in a study that climate change was “unequivocally” responsible for the heat that broke records in Britain, France, Spain and Switzerland, while the Netherlands issued its first-ever red alert over heat.
With French hospitals overwhelmed, authorities took the rarely used step of banning evening alcohol sales and public consumption in Paris starting today and into the weekend.
A woman carries a baby in Buttes-Chaumont park in Paris to escape stifling indoor temperatures
Paris police also told organisers to cancel several public events, including tomorrow’s pride march to avoid overwhelming response services.
If organisers of these events did not comply, “the police chief will ban them”, his office said.
The police issued the same request to a music festival called Solidays and an athletics meeting at Stade Charlety which were expected to draw tens of thousands of people.
As temperatures were expected to ease in western Europe, eastern Europe was on red alert, with the mercury set to climb.
In Germany, where temperatures were expected to hit 40C over the weekend, several outdoor events were cancelled and the rail operator advised avoiding travel.
French and British health services reported a surge in emergency calls and visits as the merciless heat struck the elderly and the ill.
“We are reaching a saturation point in hospital facilities,” Paris police chief Patrice Faure said. “The number of hospitalisations keeps increasing.”
France saw a fourfold increase in emergency room visits for heat-related reasons and a surge of cardiac arrests, authorities said.
London Ambulance Service said the extreme heat on Wednesday had led to the highest number of life-threatening emergency calls in a day.
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The UN’s climate chief Simon Stiell said the heatwave – made worse by buildings and infrastructure unsuited to such temperatures – “has the fingerprints of the climate crisis all over it”.
“Until humanity stops burning colossal amounts of coal, oil and gas, extreme heat will keep getting worse,” he added.
In Spain, the MoMo monitoring system of mortality rates said 212 deaths between Sunday and Wednesday could be linked to the heat.
Lightning strikes over Weymouth in the UK
Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported five deaths from the heatwave including two farmworkers and a builder.
The deputy director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, Samantha Burgess, said the hot weather was due to a “heat dome” of trapped air from north Africa in a low-lying high-pressure system, preventing cooler air from moving in.
Polly Turton, head of climate action at NGO Shade the UK, said the situation was “the new normal. The sleepless nights we’re all experiencing, we are going to have to adapt to,” she said.
“At the moment, we are not a well-adapted UK by any means.”