Western Europe faces record heat: warnings, protocols and emergency consultations | Inland

The warm Spanish and French air is getting closer and closer to us. According to the KNMI, it can reach 38 degrees in some places in the Netherlands on Tuesday. On Monday it will be around 30 degrees. The KNMI considers there is a good chance that code yellow will be issued for the southern half of the country on Tuesday due to the heat. Code orange may apply in some provinces.

Rijkswaterstaat will therefore institute a heat protocol from 10 a.m. on Monday. This means that people with bad luck at the roadside will be removed as soon as possible. According to the organization, the temperature of the asphalt can rise above 50 degrees on tropical days. ,,If you unexpectedly end up at the side of the road with bad luck, you can quickly get very hot. A few bottles of water are certainly not an unnecessary luxury,” according to the advice of Rijkswaterstaat.

In addition to the advice to take enough bottles of cold water with you, Rijkswaterstaat also advises to have an umbrella ready in the car. “There is little shade along the road.” If the sun shines with such temperatures, “an umbrella can come in very handy.” Rijkswaterstaat also expects that the heat will lead to problems at a number of bridges, which will be cooled with water to prevent them from opening.

In the meantime, the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) is making preparations for the introduction of the National Heat Plan. It serves, among other things, to prevent dehydration and overheating. This mainly concerns the elderly, babies, the chronically ill, residents of care homes and people who live in social isolation. Spain and Portugal reported the death of hundreds of people on Saturday from the heat, especially the elderly who were already weakened by diseases and for whom the high temperatures (up to 46 degrees) were too much. In Spain there were at least 360 deaths and in Portugal more than 200.

Drinking enough and ventilating the house in the morning is the motto of the National Heat Plan. The plan was first instituted fifteen years ago.

Sunday is an exciting day for the organization of the Nijmegen Four Days Marches. At 13.00, its own weather team, including a meteorologist and an exercise physiologist and with the regional health service GHOR as listener, will give advice to the organization of the four-day event that starts on Tuesday. How to deal with the hot weather?

Bringing up start times, shortening routes, reversing or canceling? An hour later, a press conference will announce what measures are being taken to deal with the predicted heat.

The Royal Meteorological Institute of neighboring Belgium (RMI) also expects it to be very warm on Monday and Tuesday, with maximums reaching 35 degrees on Monday in many places and temperatures that can even rise to 39 degrees on Tuesday. For Monday, code orange applies to the entire country, with the exception of the coast and the provinces of Liège and Namur. On Tuesday, code orange will apply to the entire country.

Code orange in Belgium means that it is necessary for everyone to take measures. These are: drink regularly, dress lighter, look for cooler rooms during the day, check your health regularly, choose easily digestible food in smaller portions and finally keep windows and doors closed to prevent heat from entering.

Belgian carrier NMBS has canceled 34 trains from Tuesday’s timetable due to the expected heat in the country. These are trains that normally run during rush hour. As a precautionary measure, extra employees will also be deployed on Tuesday to solve any malfunctions or other problems on the track. No train material will be used that day that is too sensitive to extreme heat. The trains that will not run will be parked outside in full sun during the day.

NMBS says that the measures are necessary to ‘make trains run safely and offer travelers more comfort’. The carrier advises travelers to use the travel planner before departure. Other advice is to drink enough water, work from home if possible and travel outside rush hours.

The British weather institute Met Office, comparable to the KNMI, issued a code red for extreme heat on Friday. That happened for the first time in history. Record temperatures are expected across England on Monday and Tuesday, with the mercury reaching 40 degrees. It will also be very hot in other parts of the United Kingdom. In 2019, an English record temperature of 38.7 degrees Celsius was measured in Cambridge. It is almost certain that that record will be broken next week. According to the Met Office, ‘lives are at stake’, especially of frail older people.

British ministers met on Saturday afternoon to discuss the heat wave in a so-called ‘Cobra meeting’. Interesting detail: outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson was not present at the emergency meeting. According to local media, because he had a farewell party at his Checkers country retreat this weekend and he had to prepare for it. Angela Rayner, deputy leader of Britain’s opposition Labor party, accused Johnson of ‘failing it again as he prepares to party at a time when the UK is boiling’.

British transport companies advise travelers to only make ‘essential journeys’ on Monday and Tuesday by public transport or private transport. “Public transport will clearly be affected by the heat,” Kit Malthouse said on behalf of the British cabinet after the Cobra meeting. “For example, the heat will affect the rails (rails can expand, causing the rails to warp, ed.), causing trains to run slower. There may also be fewer trips. People have to take disruptions into account. If they don’t have to travel, now is a good time to work from home.”

British health minister Steve Barclay called on vulnerable family members, acquaintances and neighbors to watch out. Additional ambulance capacity has also been made available, he said. Some British hospitals have also announced that they will schedule fewer routine surgeries and check-ups in order to keep capacity available for expected emergencies.

The warm air that currently hangs over Spain, Portugal and the south of France is expected to reach the northern countries after the weekend. In Spain, the second heat wave of this year has been going on for almost a week. Temperatures have been measured to almost 46 degrees in recent days. As a result of the heat, a large forest fire broke out north of the Spanish tourist attraction Mijas on Thursday. More than 3,000 people have been evacuated from the area, according to regional emergency services. Many of them are housed in a sports center. Several forest fires also broke out in the Extremadura region, near the border with Portugal.

In Portugal itself, thousands of hectares of forest were also burned down last week. The forest fires are raging in the northern Aveiro, the centrally located Leiria, the southern Faro (Algarve) and in Setubal, 50 kilometers south of the capital Lisbon.

France has been battling forest fires for weeks due to drought caused by high temperatures. The fire brigade is fighting the fires in southwestern France, among other things, with firefighting planes and more than a thousand firefighters. More than 12,200 people have been evacuated in the past week, according to local authorities. Tourists are also among the evacuees. The forest fires are also getting bigger and bigger. In the Gironde department, 10,000 hectares of forest were on fire on Saturday, compared to about 7300 the day before.