 Heat and big cities
Added: 03/19/2006 |
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There are heat loving microbes called thermophiles or heat-lovers, that live in temperatures so hot, the microbes could actually melt if they hadn't developed tricks and tools to handle such extreme heat.Opposite to thermophiles people do not like hot weather. Heat plays a bad role for the state of our health and most of the communications we use in our everyday life.
Ever been outside on a day so hot, you said to your friends, "I feel like I'm melting"? Well, of course, you were exaggerating. But there are heat loving microbes called thermophiles or heat-lovers, that live in temperatures so hot, the microbes could actually melt if they hadn't developed tricks and tools to handle such extreme heat.
Opposite to thermophiles people do not like hot weather. Heat plays a bad role for the state of our health and most of the communications we use in our everyday life. Summer 2005 Moscow faced such problem when some power grids failed. The southern and west southern parts of city were paralyzed. The trolleybuses, trains and subway stopped. People in subway had no air to breathe as air conditioning systems stopped working. The traffic lights did not work either. All these lead to traffic jams. Roads were not only spotted with cars but with people as well. They were attacking cars asking to take them. The taxi drivers asked the prices that were three and even five times more than usually. A number of many-stored houses were without water and electricity until power grids were restored. Delis and some shops were closed as cash registers did not work. Salesmen give the customers ice cream and some other products that have short period of shelf life as the freezers did not work and the ice cream was melting.
Moscow is not the only city that suffered such heat recently. Chicago tried to survive heat in July, 1995. The problems that heat caused in the city were very much the same. Train rails warped, causing long commuter and freight delays. City workers watered bridges to prevent them from locking when the plates expanded. Children riding in school buses became so dehydrated and nauseous that they had to be hosed down by the Fire Department. Hundreds of young people were hospitalized with heat-related illnesses. But the elderly, and especially the elderly who lived alone, were most vulnerable to the heat wave. 49,000 households had no electricity. Many Chicagoans swarmed the city's beaches, but others took to the fire hydrants. More than 3,000 hydrants around Chicago were opened, causing some neighborhoods to lose water pressure on top of losing electricity. When emergency crews came to seal the hydrants, some people threw bricks and rocks to keep them away.
Four years later in 1999, when Chicago experienced another severe heat wave, the city issued strongly worded warnings and press releases to the media, opened cooling centers and provided free bus transportation to them, phoned elderly residents, and sent police officers and city workers door-to-door to check up on seniors who lived alone.
The U.S. National Weather Service says heat is by far the leading weather-related killer and in the USA has killed more people than lightning, tornadoes, floods and hurricanes combined in the last 10 years. The numbers of heat deaths in the USA and elsewhere are underestimated.
In 2003 European heat wave struck the city of Paris. The bulk of the victims - many of them elderly - died during the height of the heat wave, which brought suffocating temperatures of up to 104 degrees in a country where air conditioning is rare. Others apparently were greatly weakened during the peak temperatures but did not die until days later. The French Parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly.
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