Gritters used in Bedfordshire to protect roads from heatwave
The authority wrote: "You might not expect to see gritters in summer, but it's an important part of looking after our roads during extreme weather conditions."An amber alert has been issued for the East of England by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), due to the high temperatures.This means the heat could cause conditions that affect demands on the NHS and potentially cause travel disruption.The warning is due to remain in place until Wednesday morning.During this period the council also said waste collection crews would work earlier in the morning to avoid the heat, it advised residents to leave their bins out the night before.
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BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Work to improve Canvey Island flood defences is completed
A £75m project to reinforce flood defences on an island has been completed after three years of work.A 3km (1.9 mile) stretch of revetment on Canvey Island in Essex has been renewed with new Environment Agency (EA) said the refreshed flood defences would protect 6,000 homes and businesses until at least operations manager James Mason said the defences would "easily be able to cope" if there was ever a repeat of the 1953 North Sea storm that killed 59 people on the island. "That said, if in a massive event they were to be over-topped... there are good emergency plans in place to ensure that we would do a safe evacuation of the island," he added. The revetment refers to the man-made material of asphalt placed on the slope leading from the shore, up to the sea of the previous revetment dated back to the steps to the beach and project information boards were installed, and a pathway between Thorney Bay and Chapman Sands was EA is improving flood defences along the Thames Estuary as part of the government's Thames Estuary 2100 plan. Mr Mason continued: "We've overlaid those older revetments, especially where they've blown and they've become void, and we've overlain it with this open stone asphalt which is a much more gradual slope which means that the wave energy is dissipated a lot more effectively which then reduces the likelihood of erosion."We've been using this method for decades, especially around the Essex coastline."So we know it's effective, we know it works well and we know that it's easy to maintain going forward." Former Conservative Canvey Island town councillor and Castle Point borough councillor, Ray Howard MBE, survived the flood in 1953 at age 10."We lost everything, my father had no insurance at all," he recalled."I knew what it was to be poor."He became part of a local flood defence committee for 43 years, and attended a ceremony celebrating the reinforced revetment on Friday."The wonderful job they've done, it's amazing," he said."It just pleases me to think that this scheme - that I voted for - has been a great success, and seeing my lovely officer today, I was able to thank every one of them." Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- BBC News
Repairs still not complete, six months after Boston flood
Six months on from serious flooding in Lincolnshire, residents say they are continuing to face severe disruption. Thirty-six homes in Boston were flooded internally on the night of 6 January when the South Forty Foot Drain overtopped, with many suffering extensive damage on the ground floor. Residents claimed the flooding would not have been as extreme if a nearby Environment Agency pumping station, considered too expensive to repair fully after being damaged in a tidal surge in 2013, had been working. The Agency said record rainfall caused the flood and a functioning pumping station would not have reduced the impact. Kelly Saunby, a mother of four young children, is one of at least a dozen residents waiting for repair work on their homes to be completed. "I have got holes in the back door, we did have rats coming in the house. There are exposed wires and there is dust everywhere in the kitchen," she said. The entire ground floor of Ms Saunby's home was flooded. "It's extremely disruptive and I work nights as well and when I come home I can't even sleep as I've got builders here from seven in the morning until late at night," she said. Some residents are continuing to live upstairs as repairs continue on the ground floor. Glenn Parsons moved into his bedroom on 6 January and is waiting for new lounge furniture to arrive. "It's been a nightmare. It's been very cramped," he said. "My wife and I have only been able to sit on the bed because we lost all the furniture downstairs."Mr Parsons said he was concerned of the threat of more flooding causing further damage to newly refurbished properties."It's a waiting game. It's horrible to be in this situation, to have lost everything. You don't want it to happen again," he said. The flooding in Boston came during a period of exceptionally heavy rain which saw more than 200 properties flooded across Greater Lincolnshire. For the first time in its history, East Midlands Ambulance Service declared a critical incident due to Environment Agency said it had seen record river levels due to heavy rain, melting snow, and frozen ground there was criticism of The Environment Agency and its approach to maintaining flood defences and dredging rivers. An Environment Agency investigation into Boston's January floods concluded flood water had both overtopped and seeped through local river defences. The Agency said it planned to improve flood defences and warning systems for the local community. However, its report said: "The Environment Agency recognises that while steps can be taken to improve resilience, flood risk cannot be eliminated. Future flooding events may exceed design standards for defences." Ms Saunby said she and her neighbours were "seriously concerned" about what the winter rainfall could bring. A spokesperson for the Environment Agency said: "We understand the local community's concern about flooding. "Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of flooding events due to rising sea levels and more extreme weather patterns."'Everybody is worried," Ms Saunby added. "If you come back to a brand new refurbished house, with new kitchens and bathrooms, could we be flooded again? We have no idea."Listen to highlights from Lincolnshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Like working in a volcano': stories from six countries in Europe on a day of extreme heat
Hundreds of millions of people across Europe suffered an extreme heatwave this week, with temperatures smashing records as the continent sweltered. With the human-caused climate emergency pushing the mercury ever higher, early in the summer Europe is experiencing troubling temperatures. From an Italian chef who works in a 60C kitchen to a homeless Dutch man given shelter in a basement, here is the story of how people across Europe coped, told over a single day this past week: Ruth Michaelson Onur Yıldırım woke up early on Tuesday morning and had a cold shower. If he starts the day any later, or without the shower, he'll be 'tired, depressed, and sweaty' all day. With a 12-hour shift of taxi driving ahead of him, he wanted to get on the road quickly. The temperature was already above 20C, and by the end of the day, Turkish firefighters across the country would have fought back multiple wildfires. Yıldırım is lucky – his car has functioning air conditioning, and many of his customers expect he'll use it. But he knows from previous summers that weeks of extreme temperature changes throughout the day can make him sick. Lorenzo Tondo In the searing heart of inland Sicily, Luigi Randazzo, 47, a sous-chef at a restaurant was plating a dish of mussels. 'I was working next to the kettle, where the thermometer read 60 degrees,' he said. 'The fryer was on. So was the oven. It felt like working inside a volcano.' While diners waited in the cool comfort of air conditioning, Randazzo moved from burner to burner in the kitchen, clad in a chef's uniform soaked with sweat. 'It felt like someone had thrown a bucket of water in my face,' he said. 'We have an air conditioner in the kitchen, but it's completely useless when all the machines are running.' In 2021, temperatures in Sicily hit a record 48.8C (119.8F). Randazzo works in the part of the island where the desert is slowly advancing across the countryside, and where, in the last six months of 2023, just 150mm of rain fell. On Tuesday, Randazzo said he was dreaming of going home and taking an ice-cold shower. But the lunch service had just begun. ''My legs were trembling with exhaustion. But you know at that moment you can't stop – not even for a second,' he added. 'That hour felt like an entire summer.' Senay Boztas It was early afternoon in Amsterdam, and Karim Taif, 46, tried to escape the heat at a shelter for homeless people in the city. 'It's cool here and a good place,' said Taif. The well-known shelter, called De Kloof, is in the basement of a historic canal house and is open until 6pm to offer shade, showers, refreshments and sunscreen to the homeless community. For the first time, the city now has a 'summer heat ruling' extending the opening hours of shelters. Taif, who was born in Morocco, grew up in Amsterdam and once worked as a barman in Switzerland. But he struggled to find housing in the Netherlands after returning in 2021 and in October, he said, he crept into a boat tied to a dock. He was found by the owner, but they agreed to let him stay. 'In the winter, it is very cold and in the summer it is so hot, you have to get out of it very early,' said Taif. 'Everything is getting hotter and hotter,' said Taif, smoking a cigarette in the garden of the shelter. 'The south of Europe is drying up … and it feels like the Sahara is moving ever closer.' Ajit Niranjan Sven, 58, had felt the heat creep up over the last two weeks as he rewired a telecommunications box. By Tuesday afternoon, it had hit 33C, and would rise to a sweltering 37C the following day. 'I've set this up to meet my needs,' he said from under a bright green umbrella. 'I've got a coolbox, I avoid working under the blazing sun, and I put a cap on when it hits. Otherwise, it's a case of not moving too fast.' German employees do not have a legal right to take time off work in the heat but bosses have a duty of care to their workers. This can mean setting up fans in offices or setting up shade on construction sites. 'For me, the heat is normal,' said Sven, 'but you do have to do things differently.' Jon Henley Built of cast iron and glass in 1866, a couple of decades before the Eiffel Tower, the Marché St Quentin is the largest covered food market in Paris. It was designed to be light and airy in all seasons, but not for 39.3C – which is what the nearby Lariboisière weather station recorded at 5pm on Tuesday. 'It was inhumane, really brutal,' said Sahra Baadache, 27, one of the market's three cheesemongers. 'A sauna. A steam bath. St Quentin is basically a greenhouse and there's no way of ventilating or cooling it down. It was 42C in here by mid-afternoon. People really suffered. Stallholders who live nearby were going home for cold showers.' Cheese and heat do not mix; textures and flavours change irreversibly. Baadache did what she could to save her 150-odd varieties, bringing out only a small fraction of her stock and covering up her two refrigerated display cabinets to keep the cold in. 'They survived, just,' she said. 'But I was a wreck – sweating about my cheeses, and sat behind two fridge motors generating even more heat.' And, of course, there were no customers: 'No one came. So it was like a double punishment.' Ashifa Kassam On Tuesday evening, as most tourists wandered through Madrid's Plaza Mayor wearing as little clothing as possible, David, 40, climbed into a furry gorilla suit, layered with a Real Madrid shirt. 'I'm soaked through with sweat,' the street performer said. 'It's even hotter inside the suit, as the inner layer is canvas.' Originally from Peru, he had started the job three months ago, perspiring his way through Spain's hottest June on record and now the first heatwave of the summer. 'I make enough to eat,' he said. While the beating sun meant most tourists were huddled under the shade cast by the plaza's arcade or under the parasols and misting systems of the plaza's restaurants and cafes, Daniel hovered in the middle of the shadeless plaza, aiming to attract attention. Every now and then, he was successful, with a trickle of tourists darting towards him just long enough to snap a photo. As temperatures climbed this week, he had done what he could to mitigate the heat, shifting his start time to early evening in the hope that the one- or two-degree drop in temperatures would offer some respite. A quick cold shower, before and after his shift, had also become a necessity. 'I play football, so that helps my body deal with the heat of the summer,' he said. 'But a job's a job – I have no other choice.'
