The scorching heat in Britain this week has closed schools, disrupted rail service and shut down a section of a major highway after the road warped
The first record fell just before noon Tuesday when the temperature in Southern England topped 39 C. An hour later the thermometer hit 40.2 C at London’s Heathrow Airport, and by evening more than 30 communities had set new all-time highs.
Unlike most cities in North America, Britain is ill-prepared for extreme heat. Air conditioning is virtually non-existent in homes, and everything from rail lines to highways have been built with the country’s moderate climate in mind. The hot air and parched land also caused dozens of fires in several cities. In London, more than 250 firefighters struggled to contain a series of grass fires in parks, woodlands and open fields. Some of the fires destroyed at least two homes in Wennington, a village east of London, as residents scrambled to evacuate.
“I’ve never known anything like this,” said Tracy Wojtowych-Mills as she stood in a baking parking lot in Hunstanton, a coastal resort town northeast of London. “It’s only going to get hotter.” “I’m loving it,” she said with a smile – although she quickly added that she’d come to the beach because her home in nearby Wisbech was unbearable. “There was just no breeze,” she said. Even the fans she’d bought provided little help. “They were just blowing hot air everywhere, so I turned them off.”LOIC VENANCE/AFP/Getty ImagesA firefighter sprays water in the Mount of Penteli, some 25 kilometers northeast of the Athens.
“In the short term, we need to learn lessons from what has happened to our infrastructure and in our buildings and urgently update our emergency plans and responses,” said Nigel Arnell, a professor of climate system science at the University of Reading.
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