At least 13 people have died from the heat wave that has hit the United States for two weeks, local authorities said on Friday. Air quality is further affected by deterioration due to forest fires in neighboring Canada.
The heat wave is hitting the southern United States hard, especially Texas and Louisiana, with temperatures often exceeding 40 degrees Celsius, for which experts point to the role of global warming.
“Ten residents of our county died in heat-related cases and an eleventh person, living in a nearby district but transported to one of our hospitals, also died,” a spokesperson for Texas’ Webb County said Friday. located on the edge of Mexico.
Last week, a teenager had lost consciousness, then his life, during an expedition in the natural park of Big Bend under a temperature flirting with 48 degrees, according to local authorities.
More than 100 dead in Mexico
In the midst of a heat wave, a 62-year-old woman was also found dead in Louisiana in an area where a storm left thousands of families without electricity and therefore without access to air conditioning. “His death was heat-related,” the US state health department said.
In Mexico, more than 100 people died between June 12 and 25 due to an extreme heat wave that hit the desert north, bordering the United States, and the capital, the secretariat of the health.
In the very north of the continent, Canada was still facing gigantic forest fires on Friday, which led to episodes of unprecedented air pollution in major cities in Quebec and Ontario.
>> Read again: Montreal becomes the most polluted city in the world due to forest fires
Atmospheric pollution
The smoke from the fires continues its way further south, in the Midwest and on the American east coast where a total of around 120 million people are experiencing an episode of air pollution these days, according to local authorities.
This Friday, the air quality in cities like New York or Philadelphia was considered unhealthy, according to the government platform Airnow.
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2023-07-01 04:39:35
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