About 30,000 people were evacuated from the greek island of rhodes because of a Forest fire out of control for five days, in a region among the most affected by the heat wave that overwhelms much of the North Hemisphere.
The greek authorities They reported on Saturday that more than 2,000 people left the tourist island in more than 30 private boats mobilized for the emergency and that more than 30,000 left in recent days by various means.
Five helicopters and 173 firefighters are fighting the fire, which broke out on a mountain in the center of the island.
Greece will experience the longest heat wave in its history since records have been kept, with more than 44°C expected this weekend.
“According to our data, we will probably experience a heat wave of 16 to 17 days, something that has never happened in our country”, declared the research director of the National Observatory, Kostas Lagouvardos.
All archaeological sites in Greeceincluding the famous Acropolis of Athens, are closed to the public during the hottest hours of the day.
“Absolute vigilance is needed (…) because the difficult moments have not passed”, warned the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsokakis.
In it center Greece temperatures of up to 45ºC are expected. The record in the country is 48ºC in 1977 in Elefsina, near Athens.
“I’m used to high temperatures. Every summer we have them, but what is difficult this year is that the heat waves follow one another”, said Christos Boyiatzis, a resident of the elegant Kolonaki neighborhood of Athens.
Progression in the United States
In the United States, the heat that oppresses the South is expected to spread to other regions.
The meteorological services They warned that some 80 million Americans will have to endure temperatures of 41º C or more during the weekend.
The thermometer could exceed 46ºC in Phoenix, the capital of Arizona (southwest), which is facing its longest spell of heat ever recorded, with 22 days in a row with temperatures of more than 43ºC.
On Thursday, this heat sparked a fire at a propane storage facility in which gas tankers exploded.
“During a hot day like this, these propane tanks swell and become real missiles.” that send debris more than 450 meters, a fire official told local KPHO television.
About 500 km from there, in California, Death Valley, one of the hottest places on the planet, attracts tourists who take pictures next to a screen that shows increasingly extreme temperatures.
Some hope that the absolute record of the planet will be broken, the 56.6 ºC registered there in 1913, but questioned by some experts.
In Canadawhere wildfires left Montreal covered in smog, torrential rains fell in the province of Nova Scotia (east), cutting roads and threatening to burst a dam.
In the remainder of July, the heat wave should move to the center of the country, skirting the Rocky Mountains and settling in the great plains of the Midwest, according to the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation Agency (NOAA).
With heat waves in Europe, America and AsiaJuly is on track to become the hottest recorded on Earth, not only since the beginning of the measurements, but also in “centuries, if not thousands of years,” NASA’s climatology chief Gavin Schmidt told reporters.
And this is not only due to El Niño, the cyclical weather phenomenon that is born in the Pacific Ocean and causes an increase in planetary temperatures, he says.
Compared to the pre-industrial era, the world is experiencing a warming of about 1.2ºC as a consequence of human activity, mainly from the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas).
(With information from AFP)
Source: Gestion
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