In Texas, a postman and a young hiker have died in recent days after fainting after a hot day. While twelve pets died after being locked in an abandoned apartment. The heat came to crack the pavement in Houston.
With summer just beginning, millions of Americans are under extreme heat watches, with temperatures topping 40°C and wind chills around 45°C.
The episode also affects parts of New Mexico, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and northern Florida, which scientists attribute to global warming.
“This heat wave is more intense, more widespread and probably also longer” than it would have been without the impact of human activities, said Andrew Pershing, vice president for science at the NGO Climate Central.
In New Orleans, Louisiana, a heat watch was issued for much of the day. In Houston, the fourth largest city in the country with 2.3 million inhabitants, cooling centers have been opened to shelter vulnerable people.
Roads were damaged due to heat and workers were busy on Tuesday to repair them.
“It’s an emergency, the state called us. The heat blew up the street. Every year we struggle with the same thing, we can’t keep up, it’s too much,” Víctor Hugo Martínez, 57, one of the repair workers, explained to AFP. of tracks in Houston.
He and his companions are permanently hydrated, he said.
“Some locations in Texas have temperatures that have been above 100 degrees Fahrenheit for more than two weeks, which is highly unusual for this time of year,” Pershing said.
“What worries us particularly is that because (the heat) started so early, people’s physiology had not yet adapted,” he added. He explained that the first heat waves of the year are usually the deadliest.
“Drink plenty of water, stay in air-conditioned rooms, shade, and check on your family and neighbors,” the US Weather Service (NWS) said, calling conditions “dangerously hot” and recommending avoiding strenuous activities.
These extreme temperatures have already lasted for days, but are gradually spreading eastward and are expected to last through the weekend.
The small town of Del Rio in Texas, on the border with Mexico, broke its heat record for eight consecutive days, reaching around 43C on Sunday, according to local weather services.
Last week, a 66-year-old postal worker collapsed while delivering mail in Dallas, when the heat index hovered around 110 degrees Fahrenheit. He died hours later, the United States Postal Service reported to the media, although the cause of his death is still being investigated.
And on Friday, a 14-year-old boy collapsed from exhaustion while hiking in Big Bend National Park in Texas and later died, according to an official statement.
Meanwhile, twelve cats and a dog were found dead in an abandoned apartment, according to the Houston Humane Society. Six other cats were rescued alive.
“They were dead all over the apartment. A couple of them were in the kitchen sink, apparently trying to get water out. There were another couple near the walls and the six survivors were under the sink, trying to conserve some energy.” said Tuesday Macey Staes, representative of the organization.
The discovery occurred a week ago in a building without any type of service, air conditioning, water or food.
Ercot, which manages the power grid in Texas, warned that power demand was higher because of the heat, but said it hoped to cope. He has called for voluntary energy saving.
“Air conditioning can literally save lives,” Kristina Dahl of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) told AFP.
“But if we don’t run it with renewable energy, we contribute to releasing more emissions into the atmosphere, which will add more heat,” he added.
It is a “challenge,” he said. Air conditioning is not a mass-adopted device, but its use should “explode in the next few decades.”
According to GridStatus.io, renewables – solar and wind – currently account for around 35% of the Texas grid mix.
For Dahl, this heat wave “is exactly what you would expect in a warming world.”
FUENTE: AFP
