Thursday, July 1, 2021

Canadian small town evacuated
Litton burns after three heat records

The news of the past few days is worrying: Litton village has broken an 83-year-old national heat record. However, the thermometer will rise even more in the coming days. Many heat deaths occur. Then the fire starts.

After record summer days, residents of the Canadian city of Lytton had to flee their homes because of the blazing flames. Mayor Jan Polderman met on Wednesday evening Ordered to vacate space in the province of British Columbia, TV broadcaster CBC reported. “It’s terrible. The whole city is on fire,” he told the broadcaster. “It took about 15 minutes from the first signs of smoking to the point where there was a sudden fire everywhere.”

Earlier, Litton had set the heat record for three consecutive days. According to the weather authority, the thermometer showed 49.6 degrees Celsius, an “all-time temperature record” with about 250 residents in the city on Tuesday. Lytton is approximately 260 kilometers northeast of Vancouver.

Because of the fire, many residents had to move to a safer location, some without their belongings, reports the CBC. The fire department reported the fire several times in the area on Twitter. Initially, the information about the dimensions was not available. The ongoing heat wave in western Canada has already contributed to hundreds of deaths, according to officials.

Forensic medicine for the West Coast province said there were 486 sudden and unexpected deaths in British Columbia from Friday to Wednesday. This number is likely to increase. This is 195 percent higher than the general average for the comparable period. The authority recognized that the sharp increase is related to the extreme heat. Record temperatures have also been measured in the western United States over the past few days.