Fears rise for homeless and vulnerable people as communities brace for another week of relentless hot weather
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A sign warns bathers of the extreme heat on Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia.
Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images
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It’s easy to see why: in the middle of the day it takes seconds to blister a dog’s paw or child’s foot. In Mildura, in northern Victoria, last week gardeners burned their hands when they picked up their tools, which had been left in the sun at 46C. Fish were dying in the rivers.
Almost every day last week a new heat record was broken in Australia. They spread out, unrelenting, across the country, with records broken for all kinds of reasons – as if the statistics were finding an infinite series of ways to say that it was hot.
The community of Noona – population 14 – reached the highest minimum ever recorded overnight in Australia – 35.9C was the coldest it got, at 7am on Friday. It was 45C by noon.
A record fell on Tuesday in Meekatharra in Western Australia – the highest minimum there ever recorded (33C). Another fell on Wednesday, 2,000 miles away, in Albury, New South Wales – their hottest day (45.6C).
It was 45C or higher for four consecutive days in Broken Hill – another record – and more than 40C for the same time period in Canberra, the nation’s capital. Nine records fell across NSW on Wednesday alone. Back in Port Augusta, Tuesday was the highest temperature since records began in 1962.
Temperatures peak in towns across Australia as heatwave shows no sign of letting up Maximum daytime temperatures  |
| Guardian graphic |
“It feels like you’ve walked into a sauna,” she said. “When it’s getting up to 43C or 44C, because you have all these machines going, the air conditioning isn’t coping very well.
“We’ve got tables outside that nobody has sat at for the last couple of days … You’d be crazy to sit outside on a day like today.”
In Mildura, Tolga Ozkuzucu, owner of Top Notch Gardens, had the misfortune to be working outdoors.
“It’s been like hell,” he said. “You have to try to leave your tools in the shade. If you don’t, it burns your fingers. There’s not much you can do.
“I try to start as early as I can. I’m not going to risk my body and health. People here are very understanding of that because they know how hot it is … nobody wants to be outside when it’s 46C.”
In South Australia, they declared a “code red” across Adelaide, the state capital. Homelessness services were working overtime and the Red Cross started calling round a list of 750 people who were deemed especially vulnerable.
At the Australian Open in Melbourne, only the sea breeze kept the temperature below 40C. At Adelaide’s Tour Down Under, a bike race, it was 41C.
On Monday last week the hottest spot in New South Wales was Menindee, a river town that feeds the country’s largest water system, the Murray-Darling basin. It was 45C. It climbed to 47C on Wednesday, and by Thursday the fish were gasping.
Australia’s native Murray cod can live for decades under normal conditions, growing all the while. The oldest are a metre long, with heavy white bellies that have to be held with both hands. Last week, hundreds died, choked of oxygen due to an algal bloom that fed and grew in the heat, and collapsed when temperatures dipped.
'Bloody disgrace': '100-year-old' fish die in Darling River
Blue-green algae flourishes in hot, slow-moving water. Then, when temperatures inevitably drop, the algae dies and becomes a food source for bacteria, who multiply and starve the river of oxygen. The fish rise to the surface.
The mass fish death has reignited a debate over water management in the region, where cotton farmers upstream have been accused of taking more water than they should.
The heat is not the root cause, the locals stress. But the five punishing days settling over the river have not made it better. Last Thursday the cod were up near the surface and struggling. On Friday, it was 45C again. In Menindee, the locals believe the fish kill will happen again, with temperatures in the 40s expected to continue into this week. The water will be running hot.
But away from the Darling, Michelle Coles from Port Augusta says she is used to the heat.
“I didn’t think it was that hot yesterday, if you want an honest answer,” she said last Wednesday, the day after the temperature hit 48.9C.
“Yesterday at the cinema, it was very quiet. People tend to stay home. We’re quite used to it. Once it’s over 40, it’s hot.
“We’re conditioned to it. Honestly, I’d much rather be in 48C heat in Port Augusta than in the city. You’ve got so much concrete and it’s closed in, but here it’s quite open.
“You just don’t stand out in the sun though. That would be stupid.”
Links
- Roads melt as temperatures break records across NSW
- The world's 15 hottest sites on Tuesday were all in Australia
- Bureau of Meteorology calls run of prolonged heatwaves ‘unusual’ in length and intensity
- Australia heatwave: overnight minimum of 35.9C in Noona sets new record
- NSW Heatwave
- 'Civilisation in crisis': Science tells us how to eat to save our planet
- 'One died in front of us': More dead fish surface in the Darling River
- Australia weather: record-breaking heatwave enters third day as temperatures soar
- Australia heatwave: temperatures to soar in every state and territory
- Heatwave sweeps across Australia with temperatures 10C above average
- Bushfire conditions in Australia's east at ‘near record’ levels following dry winter
- Eastern Australia swelters under heatwave as hottest January on record looms
- Bushfire fears as south-eastern Australia swelters through record heat
- Temperatures to soar across South Australia, Victoria and NSW
- Heatwave to push temperatures above 40C in parts of Australia
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