Italy continues to swelter as extraordinary heatwave approaches peak

In Rome 28 heat help points have been set up, dotted around the city, with the aim of preventing people from collapsing from heat exhaustion, with the temperature in the capital forecast to reach a new high of 42 degrees Celsius.

Temperatures are forecast to climb to 47 degrees in areas of southern Sardinia this week, and 45 or 46 in Sicily.

On Tuesday, 20 major Italian cities are on red alert due to the heat - Ancona, Bologna, Bolzano, Brescia, Cagliari, Campobasso, Florence, Frosinone, Latina, Messina, Naples, Palermo, Perugia, Pescara, Rieti, Rome, Trieste, Venice, Verona and Viterbo.

On Wednesday Bari, Catania, Civitavecchia and Turin will join them, while Bolzano drops down to yellow alert.

The health ministry has sent a circular letter to Italy’s regional governments with a series of recommendations to manage the impact of the heat.

These recommendations include setting up a ‘heat code’ at emergency rooms with special, priority procedures for people suffering heat-related health issues.

They also call for the creation of special USCAR units to provide care for people at home, especially for vulnerable groups like the elderly, and prevent ERs being overwhelmed by people going to casualty with problems that could be solved elsewhere.

The letter tells the regions to boost out-of-hours doctor services, too.

Maurizio Landini, the leader of Italy’s biggest trade union, the Cgil, on Tuesday sounded the alarm about the danger the heatwave presents to workers’ lives.

With high temperatures making it impossible to work, the Stellantis group sent home workers at its Pomigliano d’Arco plant near Naples on Tuesday afternoon. (Photo: ANSA)

“The heatwave is increasing the risks to the health and safety of female and male workers and, unfortunately, it has caused two deaths in the last few days,” Landini said.

“This is totally unacceptable.

“We have asked our delegates in the places of work to request urgent meetings with companies to negotiate the necessary temporary changes to work organisation, changing shifts and work times, and going as far as halting work all together.

“We have also asked, together with the Cisl and Uil unions, for a meeting with Labour Minister Marina Elvira Calderone for businesses to be given urgent recommendations for temporary changes to work organization, without excluding the possible use of the CIGO furlough fund for extraordinary climate events”.

The Stellantis group sent home workers at its Pomigliano d’Arco plant near Naples on Tuesday afternoon because it was too hot to work.

The international car manufacturer decided to release workers on the Panda production line from 4pm local time.

On Monday, workers on the same production line stopped working spontaneously after rising temperatures made it impossible for them to carry out their tasks.

Electricity consumption reached a new 2023 record on Tuesday afternoon as people turned on fans and ramped up the air conditioning to cope, grid operator Terna has said.

While hot weather and heat are expected in Europe at this time of year, and the continent has endured very hot summers in the past two decades, this year is concerning scientists far more.

“It’s the intensity and duration that’s really quite concerning,” an expert from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes in Canberra says about the hot weather. “This is definitely not the worst to come, it’s probably only a taste of it to be precise." (Photo: ANSA)

“These places have been absolutely obliterated by hot air, and not just hot air or hot weather, but the kind [that] hangs around for weeks at a time,” Associate Professor Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a senior lecturer at UNSW Canberra, and a chief investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, told Australian news outlet, The New Daily.

“It’s the intensity and duration that’s really quite concerning.”

“This is definitely not the worst to come, it’s probably only a taste of it to be precise,” she said.

Overnight minimum temperatures were also expected to reach new highs, the World Meteorological Organisation  said, creating the risk of increased cases of heart attacks and deaths.

“Whilst most of the attention focuses on daytime maximum temperatures, it is the overnight temperatures which have the biggest health risks, especially for vulnerable populations,” it said.

Two wildfires have swept uncontrolled through forestland and towns northwest of Athens for a second day, forcing more residents to flee their homes as authorities fight to stop the flames reaching an area with oil refineries.

One of the fire fronts on Tuesday stretched more than eight kilometres, according to witnesses and officials, burning homes and cars around the area of Mandra, west of the capital, which was blanketed by dense smoke.

“We are living a nightmare,” Mandra mayor Christos Stathis told Open TV.

“Houses and properties are on fire.”

A blaze raged uncontrolled and burned forest in the area of Dervenochoria about 30 kilometres north of Athens, a fire service official said on Tuesday.

Another fire weakened on Tuesday, having first broke out on Monday in the village of Kouvaras, about 27km southeast of the Greek capital.

Fanned by shifting winds, that fire had quickly spread to the coastal towns of Anavyssos, Lagonisi and Saronida, forcing people to flee their homes.

However, 230 firefighters assisted by 76 fire engines and five helicopters were still operating at different spots in the area, a Greek fire service official said on Tuesday.

A mayor told Greek television more than 2800 hectares of land was reduced to ashes along a coast where many Athenians have holiday homes.

Greece still has memories of a wildfire disaster in 2018, when a blaze killed 101 people in the seaside town of Mati, east of Athens.

ANSA