London Luton airport cancels flights due to runway failure, Belgium suspends trains and 10,000 French people are evicted due to fires
Western Europe is bracing for “a heat apocalypse” on Tuesday, with a record temperature of 44 degrees in southwestern France and 40 degrees in the UK for the first time. The effects of the phenomenon were felt on British soil this Monday, where London’s Luton airport had to cancel flights and divert a dozen planes to Stansted airport after it sparked the rise of mercury in a runway shutdown.
The damage at Luton Airport, about 60 kilometers north of central London, also caused delays in more than 60 arrivals and departures from EasyJet, TUI, Ryanair and Wizz. Also, the British Royal Air Force was forced to use alternative airfields for the Brize Norton base after heat melted the Oxfordshire runway, according to Sky News.
The United Kingdom government, which has activated the highest alert level 4 in anticipation of this Tuesday being the most blazing day of all time, has urged the public to stay at home. Meanwhile, the national rail network has urged passengers not to travel unless necessary, and some services, including a major route between North East England and London, will be partially interrupted during the day. The metro network has also imposed temporary speed limits, causing journeys to take longer than usual.
Another of the worst-case scenarios of the heat wave was witnessed this Monday near Bordeaux, where the two major fires that are still active forced the evacuation of a further 10,000 people, raising the number of residents who have had to leave their homes on 27,000 coming. France. The fire has already burned nearly 15,000 hectares of vegetation in the prefecture of Aquitaine and an improvement is not expected as the thermometers will register maximum again this Tuesday. Faced with such a situation, the Gallic government has issued a red alert.
François Gourand, meteorologist for Météo France, has defined the scenario hitting Western Europe as “an apocalypse of heat”, while newspapers such as Britain’s ‘The Sun’ headlined: “Hotter than the Sahara”.
In Portugal, some 800 firefighters continued this Monday to extinguish four active fires in the center and north of the Portuguese country, which broke its temperature record for a month of July by 47 degrees on Thursday. Meanwhile, the Netherlands and Belgium issued the orange warning because of the intense heat, which prompted the NMBS to report the failure of some thirty trains during the days with the highest temperatures.
The European Commission, attributing the phenomenon to climate change, has put nearly half of the EU at “risk” of drought. According to the Community Executive, the prolonged lack of rain will lead to a decline in grain production in countries such as France, Romania, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
Source: La Verdad
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