Canada has marked its highest temperature in history, reaching 49.5 degrees Celsius in the municipality of Lytton, in the province of British Columbia, while the Police have reported dozens of deaths due to the heat wave in the west of the country .
It is the third consecutive day that Lytton has broken its temperature record, after reaching 46.6 and 47 degrees Celsius on Sunday and Monday, respectively, although in this case it has reached almost 50 degrees Celsius, which has been reached at 4:20 p.m. (local time).
Before recording these maximums, the highest temperature recorded in the country had been 45 degrees Celsius marked in 1937 in Midale, in the province of Saskatchewan, reports the Canadian media CBC.
British Columbia and parts of the province of Alberta are being hit hardest by record high temperatures.
The Metro Vancouver Police – an administrative subdivision of the province of British Columbia, comprising the Greater Vancouver Area – have reported that they have responded to more than a hundred sudden deaths since extreme heat swept through the province.
Meanwhile, the Vancouver Police have indicated that until Tuesday they have received notifications of more than 65 sudden deaths since last Friday, with about twenty of those deaths registered this Tuesday.
“Vancouver has never experienced heat like this and, sadly, dozens of people are dying because of it,” lamented Vancouver Police spokesman Steve Addison, adding that officers are doing “what they can” to carry out their work, but are “on the edge.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the city of Burnaby, also in British Columbia, has indicated that they have received calls for 25 deaths since Monday, many of the deceased being elderly.
History is repeating itself in other parts of the west of the country and the authorities insist on the increase in deaths due to extreme heat.
Many places in North America, including the state of Oregon in the western United States, have also recorded local record temperatures well above 40 degrees Celsius during the recent heat wave.
