France saw around 1,000 additional deaths last week at the height of its record-smashing heatwave, the country’s public health agency said, as new temperature highs sparked wildfires in Germany and Berlin police used water cannons to cool down the crowds.
Temperature records were toppled in several countries at the weekend as the heatwave slowly moved toward eastern parts of the continent.
In Germany, a new night-time temperature record was reported on Sunday in Kubschütz, in eastern Saxony, with 29.4C. It came only hours after a daytime record of 41.5C in Möckern-Drewitz in Saxony-Anhalt, according to preliminary data by the German Weather Service DWD.
A new study from World Weather Attribution, a Europe-based collaboration of scientists, reported on Friday that the record-breaking heat and humidity in Europe this past week would not have been possible without climate change.
The rapid study found that the heat would have been virtually impossible just five decades ago, and is 200 times more likely today than it would have been 20 years ago.
France reported a surge in deaths last week at the height of the heatwave, including a sharp increase at private homes, especially in the Paris region.
There were more than 1,200 deaths on Wednesday, when France was sweltering under its hottest temperatures, increasing to more than 1,400 deaths on each of the two following days, Public Health France said. In April and May, before the heatwave, France’s rate of deaths was about 900 to 1,000 per day.
The agency concluded that France experienced a total of at least 1,000 additional deaths during those three days alone, an estimate it cautioned is likely to increase as more data is collected, including for deaths at home.
The increase was sharpest in areas under red warnings of extreme heat, it said. Those warnings blanketed about three-quarters of the country at the peak of the heatwave. The agency said that 85% of the deaths involved people aged 65 and above.
In Sweden, several people were injured when they were hit by lightning at an amusement park, the country’s TT news agency reported.
Three adults were taken to the hospital, among them a woman with serious injuries, after the lightning struck the Tosselilla Sommarland park in Tomelilla in the south of the country.
Across Europe, the extreme heat has been followed by severe thunderstorms.
In Gohrischheide, in eastern Germany, a fire broke out in a large forest that is still contaminated with ammunition from the Second World War, which made the firefighters’ efforts even more complicated.
Similarly, a major firefighting operation was under way in south-west Germany near the village of Traisen, where the heat sparked a forest fire in an area that also contained unexploded ordnance. Firefighters had to be temporarily stop after explosions took place and an ordnance disposal unit was brought in to continuously assess the situation, German news agency dpa reported.
The big cities’ fire departments were busy sending out ambulances to people suffering from heat-related illnesses. In Berlin, an additional 500 ambulance dispatches were reported on Saturday, most of them heat-related.
The German capital’s police found a unique way to help suffering Berliners and tourists alike. They put up two huge water cannons — usually used to disperse unruly protesters — in front of the city’s iconic Brandenburg Gate and sprayed the cool water across the cheering crowd.
The heat also continued to damage the country’s infrastructure with the concrete surface on countless highways breaking up, and a weekend warning by national rail operator Deutsche Bahn to avoid all unnecessary train travel.
More than 600 passengers had to be evacuated from an overheated train in Brandenburg, after a tree fell on to an overhead power line during a storm on Saturday evening. The train, which was on its way from Hamburg to Prague, lost power. The air conditioners stopped working and the doors were locked until emergency responders forced them open. Two people were taken to hospital with heat-related problems, dpa reported.
In the eastern city of Leipzig, no trams will be running until early Monday morning due to heat damage to tracks and switches. The Leipzig Public Transportation Authority said that the high temperatures had caused the joint sealant for asphalt and concrete in switches and tracks to run and clump together in many places throughout the city’s network.
In Greece, the Civil Protection agency warned of a “very high fire risk” in five regions of the country on Sunday.
Wildfires are especially challenging in Greece, which has a dry mountainous mainland and over 100 inhabited islands, prompting authorities to introduce innovative space technology to help put them out quickly.
In Denmark, which marked new temperature records on Saturday, the extreme heat was followed by heavy thunderstorms.
By Sunday morning, the Nordic country had recorded 1,156 lightning strikes, according to public broadcaster DR.