The city of Vancouver, British Columbia, is seen through a haze on a scorching hot day, June 29, 2021
Millions of people in western Canada and the northwestern United States were under heat alerts Wednesday as the region baked in record-breaking temperatures and police reported scores of deaths likely linked to the scorching conditions.
The heat wave has stretched emergency services, with at least 134 people dying suddenly since Friday in the Vancouver area and hundreds more across British Columbia, according to Canadian police and the local coroner.
The northwestern US state of Washington recorded at least 16 deaths related to the heat wave, including two who died of hyperthermia as their bodies overheated, county health officials said.
President Joe Biden told a virtual meeting with governors from western states that “the threat of western wildfires this year is as severe as it’s ever been.”
Federal officials say the fire season is already outpacing last year’s — the worst on record in drought-hit California.
– ‘Whole town is on fire’ –
“The whole town is on fire. It took, like, a whole 15 minutes from the first sign of smoke to, all of a sudden, there being fire everywhere,” Lytton mayor Jan Polderman told Canadian broadcaster CBC News.
Residents of another 241 homes in the area were issued evacuation orders by regional authorities.
The Vancouver Police Department said Wednesday it alone had responded to more than 98 sudden deaths since Friday, with the vast majority “related to the heat.”
“It’s never this bad. I’ve never seen anything like this,” said a Vancouver resident who only gave her name as Rosa.
Others lamented that some residents were more vulnerable to the heat than others.
Environment Canada said the city’s heat wave would become less intense from Wednesday but unseasonably hot temperatures would persist for the remainder of the week.
Climate change is causing record-setting temperatures to become more frequent.
“We’ve been seeing more and more of this type of extreme weather event in the past years. So realistically, we know that this heat wave won’t be the last,” said Trudeau.
Temperatures in the US Pacific Northwest cities of Portland and Seattle reached levels not seen since record-keeping began in the 1940s: 115 degrees Fahrenheit in Portland and 108 in Seattle Monday.
The province’s chief coroner’s office said in a statement it recorded 486 deaths between Friday and Wednesday, compared with 165 on average.
Cities across the western United States and Canada opened emergency cooling centers and outreach workers handed out bottles of water and hats.
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