Italy limits outdoor work as heatwave breaks records across Europe
Tens of thousands of people have also been evacuated from their homes in Turkey due to wildfires; while the top of the Eiffel Tower was closed to tourists on Tuesday as temperatures in Paris were poised to hit 38C (100.4F).
Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna, two northern Italian industrial hubs, announced on Tuesday that they were stopping open-air work between 12.30pm and 4pm, joining 11 other Italian regions – stretching from Liguria in the north-west to Calabria and Sicily in the south – that have imposed similar bans in recent days.
Local authorities were heeding advice from trade unions after the death of Brahim Ait El Hajjam, a 47-year-old construction worker, who collapsed and died while working on a construction site close to Bologna, the Emilia-Romagna capital, on Monday.
The CGIL Bologna and Fillea CGIL unions said in a statement: 'While we wait to learn the actual cause of death, it is essential, during this terrible period, to promote a culture of safety. The climate emergency has clearly worsened the conditions for those who work outside every day and companies must give absolute priority to the protection of workers.'
The measures vary from region to region but include a halt on outdoor activities on construction sites, quarries and farms during the stipulated hours. Attilio Fontana, the president of Lombardy, said: 'Our priority is to protect the health of workers, especially during times like these when the heat becomes particularly unbearable.'
Vincenzo Colla, councillor for work in Emilia-Romagna, said: 'Protecting workers is our responsibility.'
A 53-year-old woman died on Monday after fainting while walking along a street in Palermo, Sicily. She reportedly suffered from a heart condition.
A 70-year-old man was reported to have drowned at a tourist resort close to Turin as intense heat gave way to storms and flash floods.
French national rail operator SNCF said train travel between France and Italy had been suspended for 'at least several days' after violent storms on Monday, AFP reported.
Cogne, a town in the Aosta Valley that suffered severe flooding in June last year, has been cut off by a landslide.
Admissions to hospital emergency units in some Italian regions has risen by 15-20% in recent days, with the majority of patients being elderly people suffering from dehydration.
The Spanish state meteorological agency, Aemet, said in a social media update that 'June 2025 smashed records' when it comes to high temperature, with an average temperature of 23.6C, 0.8C above the previous hottest June in 2017. The monthly average was also 3.5C higher than the average over the period from 1991 to 2020, it said.
The agency's comments come just days after Spain's highest ever June temperature of 46C was recorded in the Huelva province of Andalucía.
In Portugal, temperatures hit 46.6C in Mora, a town in the Évora district, in recent days, making it the highest June temperature ever recorded in the country, according to the Portuguese Institute for the Sea and Atmosphere.
In France, the prime minister, François Bayrou, tried to calm anger at the heatwave crisis in French schools. More than 1,896 schools across the country were fully or partially closed on Tuesday as classrooms proved dangerously hot for children and teachers, amid anger from teaching unions.
In Paris, which was on maximum heatwave alert, parents were advised to keep their children home on Tuesday and Wednesday. Some other towns including Troyes and Melun closed all their schools.
Bayrou said the education ministry would open talks with mayors on how to adapt school buildings, most of which are extremely poorly insulated.
As temperatures rose on Tuesday, some Paris teachers had nothing more than a water spray on their desk to repeatedly spritz children in classrooms in the hope of keeping cool.
Bayrou, who is separately facing a vote of no confidence on Tuesday, which he is expected to survive, has cancelled his meetings to monitor the situation in real time.
Other cities across Europe continent are also experiencing higher than usual temperatures, including Zaragoza (39C), Rome (37C), Madrid (37C), Athens (37C), Brussels (36C), Frankfurt am Main (36C), Tirana (35C) and London (33C).
Turkey's forestry minister, İbrahim Yumaklı, said firefighters had been called out to 263 wildfires across the country in recent days. Firefighters have also been tackling wildfires in parts of France and Italy, especially on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily.
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘A war of the truth': Europe's heatwaves are failing to spur support for climate action
'It's just too much, isn't it?' says Julie, a retiree in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, about the 42C (107.6F) heat that her brother had seen scorch Spain last week. The former local government worker has felt summers get hotter over her lifetime and says she 'couldn't stand' such high heat herself. But like many who experienced Europe's first heatwave of the summer, Julie does not sound overly alarmed. She worries about climate breakdown for young people, but is not concerned about herself. She thinks more climate action would be nice, but does not know what can be done about it. She does not have much faith in the government. 'It's like everything else,' she says. 'I think it's all too little, too late.' As heatwaves engulfed large swathes of Europe and North America last week – the latest in a stream of deadly extremes made worse by fossil fuel pollution – green groups are frustrated that increasingly violent weather has not spurred the urgent support for climate action they had expected. Governments across the rich world continue to roll back policies to stop the planet from heating, while far-right parties that deny climate science lash out at environment rules even as disasters unfold. Their voters, while rarely climate deniers themselves, seem to tolerate their energetic attacks on environmental policy, if not support them. The views of someone like Julie – who declined to reveal her voting preference – sounded similar to what was seen across the country, said Ed Hodgson, an analyst at the research group More in Common who has run focus groups on climate action. Polls taken over the second-last weekend of June show most people in the UK found the previous week of weather too hot, are worried it will get hotter, and hold the climate crisis at least partly responsible. But the nonprofit also found the share of people concerned about climate change has fallen over the past year, dipping from 68% to 60%. Support for the UK's target to hit net zero emissions by 2050 fell even further, plunging from 62% to 46%. 'The issue is really that there are so many other concerns now,' said Hodgson, citing the organisation's data tracking the top issues that people face each week. 'Three years ago you'd have the cost of living first, then the National Health Service, and then immigration and climate – those two would compete for third place. Now, when we do those polls, climate is near the bottom of the list.' The contradictions are visible in towns such as Stanford-le-Hope, where Julie lives, which is among the few already represented in parliament by the rightwing populist Reform UK. A YouGov poll last month found just over half of Reform voters wanted a heatwave in the coming weeks. The party, which has promised to scrap the net zero target and 'unlock Britain's vast oil and gas reserves', is projected to win eight of the 10 most flood-prone constituencies at the next general election, according to an analysis in May by the NGO Global Witness and Round Our Way, a campaign group. Far-right parties across mainland Europe have been even more vocal in using the heatwave to take aim at climate policy, even as blazing wildfires force thousands to flee their homes and doctors warn of widespread excess deaths. In Spain, where the current heatwave brought a record June temperature of 46C, the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal, mocked a government promise to regulate fear-based advertising by asking if they were also going to 'ban the propaganda of climate religion'. In Italy, which has limited outdoor work during the hottest parts of the day in most of the country, the Lega party MP Claudio Borghi said: 'Climate change has always existed, the causes are anything but clear, and the solutions are contrary to what … is correct.' Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland co-chair Alice Weidel shared a social media post from a climate sceptic that compared the heat on Tuesday to slightly hotter temperatures on the same day in 1952, as the country was 'clearing away the rubble of war'. The post took a swipe at the World Economic Forum, the German public broadcaster and the Green party. The biggest political row over the heat erupted in France, where the National Rally figurehead, Marine Le Pen, called for a 'major' air conditioning plan – one week after the party failed in its parliamentary push to halt new wind and solar projects. In an opinion article in Le Figaro on Thursday, the interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, a conservative, called to stop support for renewable energy and expand France's nuclear energy sector. The proposal earned rebukes from the ecology minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who described it as 'petty politics' that would write Algeria a check for oil, and the former prime minister Gabriel Attal, who called it an 'incomprehensible' misstep. 'As we endure several days of an unprecedented heatwave, we are witnessing a troubling resurgence of anti-science scepticism,' he said. Some far-right parties have focused their attention on old-school climate denial, while others have moved from questioning the science to aggressively campaigning against solutions. 'I don't think the extreme heat is being weaponised, but the efforts to limit it certainly are,' said Ciarán Cuffe, a co-chair of the European Green party and former Irish environment minister. He added that Le Pen's call for more air conditioning – which he said should be one solution among many – may even represent a shift in strategy. 'It's a recognition that these heatwaves are happening, and that they are extreme.' The paradox is that far-right parties bashing green rules are polling well above 20% in several European countries, even though the share of people who deny climate science is typically in single digits. In the UK, pollsters find just 6% of Reform voters list environmental policy as a reason for voting for the party, according to More in Common. That said, the level of threat perception among their voters is much higher than in other parties, said Hodgson. 'They see threats around them and think we need a strong response. So it makes sense for politicians to campaign around those moments.' Climate campaigners have argued that the far right's success in dominating the climate narrative is weakening support for action and providing centrist parties cover to scrap green policies, even if it has failed to create a widespread backlash against green policy. 'The far right has a strategy but everyone else doesn't,' said Luisa Neubauer, a German activist from Fridays for Future, which staged its first night-time protest against climate inaction outside the German economy ministry on Wednesday, as a result of the high heat. Too many people in power or with platforms 'have not yet understood that we're in a war of language – and a war of the truth – about the climate', she added. 'And too few of us are actively standing in the way of that.'
Times
10 hours ago
- Times
Seine finally opens for public swimming — but mind the rats
Parisians who are brave enough to take a plunge in the Seine as it opens for public swimming this weekend for the first time in a century will be reviving a once popular pastime. Swimming in the Seine became fashionable in the 17th century, when Parisians would bathe in the river, with canvas screens separating men's and women's areas. Paris banned swimming in the Seine in 1923 over concerns about water quality. After a €1.4 billion clean-up before the Paris 2024 Olympic Games last summer, which made it possible to hold some swimming races in the river, city officials have declared it safe. It may still look a little murky, but swimming will be allowed at three designated points in Paris: Bras Marie, Bras de Grenelle near the Eiffel Tower, and Bercy. They have been equipped with showers and lockers, and, with the exception of the Bras Marie site, changing cubicles. River swimming is a pet project of Anne Hidalgo, the Paris mayor, who took a five-minute dip in the Seine herself before the Olympics and deemed the water 'exquisite'. 'Swimming in the Seine is a response to the aim of adapting to climate change,' the mayor said just before this week's heatwave. 'The more temperatures rise, the more we will have to find spaces where people can cool off. This is also about the quality of life.' The authorities say the three swimming areas will be closed if storms wash sewage or waste into the water, or if the currents are too strong. Several Olympic swimmers became ill with vomiting or diarrhoea after competing in open water races in the river, although it was never proved that exposure to the Seine water was to blame. 'The issue of discharges into the river from houseboats and barges has never been settled,' Jean-Pierre Lecoq, the conservative mayor of Paris's sixth arrondissement, told The Times. 'They empty their toilets and the water from their kitchens into the Seine. 'That may not amount to a huge problem, but there's definitely a lot of muck down there, and then there are the rats. The water's too dark to see what's underneath. Personally, I love swimming in the sea but I wouldn't go swimming in the Seine in Paris.' Many Parisians agree with him. 'Never ever would I swim in the Seine,' said Romain Verani, 35, who swims three times a week at a public pool. 'It's too hard to treat the water. The Seine is too big a river to clean effectively. I'd consider swimming in the Canal de l'Ourcq, which has been open for swimming for a few years, because it's more enclosed, like a big pool, so it's easier to filter.' Ninon Le Pennec, 28, said she would not trust the mayor's word that the river water was safe. 'It doesn't look very clean to me.' But Paul Rodier, also 28, was more amenable. 'I'm a bit worried about it but I'd still give it a go,' he said. 'After all, the authorities say it's been cleaned up.' Older Parisians recall with nostalgia how they used to swim in river water in the Deligny, a floating public pool on the left bank of the Seine, opposite what is now the Musée d'Orsay. It was a favourite haunt of the glitterati, attracting Hollywood stars such as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Errol Flynn. Opinions were always divided, however, about the wisdom of bathing in untreated river water. In 1844, half a century after it opened, the Deligny's water was described as 'dirty, cloudy, often foul-smelling and unhealthy' by Eugène Briffault, one of the founders of Le Figaro newspaper. Filters were eventually installed in 1919 after swimmers complained of muddy deposits in the water. Thereafter the authorities claimed it was safe because the water was continually being replenished. Unfortunately, that also made the unheated pool bone-chillingly cold, although it did offer the advantage of not reeking of chlorine. Many were sad when the Deligny mysteriously sprang a leak and sank in 1993. As a new era begins, the mayor and her supporters are hoping that the sceptics will put aside their doubts and dive in.
Reuters
11 hours ago
- Reuters
Greece battles wildfire on Crete for a third day as temperatures rise
ATHENS, July 4 (Reuters) - Gale force wind gusts complicated efforts on Friday to contain wildfires on Crete that have razed forests and olive groves and forced thousands of residents and tourists to evacuate. Around 130 firefighters, 48 vehicles and six helicopters were deployed on the third day of the effort, with the wind and dry conditions raising the risk that blazes might restart in areas of the island where they had already been contained. In Greece's capital Athens, about 800 people were evacuated from the suburb of Koropi where more than 120 firefighters battled a blaze supported by eight airplanes and eight helicopters, a fire brigade spokesperson said. The fires in Crete and in Athens come as much of Europe swelters in an early summer heatwave, which officials have linked to at least eight deaths on the continent. The blazes in Crete, which broke out in a village about 16 km (10 miles) east of Ierapetra on Wednesday, have consumed swathes of agricultural land in the southeastern corner of the island, leaving dead animals and scorched farmhouses. Olive farmer Giorgos Poulis was sorting out destroyed farming equipment beside his burned-out truck. "The damage is incalculable in every way, from water drilling equipment, pipes, tires, cars, the cement mixer," he said, gesturing around him. George Tzarakis, head of Hoteliers of Ierapetra and southeastern Crete, told Reuters most of the 3,500 tourists who had been evacuated were returning to their hotels. Tourism is a key earner in Crete, the largest island in Greece, and local hoteliers were concerned about future bookings as the fire hit at the start of the peak summer holiday season. Temperatures in Greece were forecast to reach up to 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 Fahrenheit) on Friday, the Greek weather service said. In another Athens suburb, Pikermi, some 148 firefighters battled a fire that broke out on Thursday, threatening many homes, cutting power and prompting authorities to move more than 300 people to safety. The fire was contained but not extinguished, the fire brigade official said. In Italy, the health ministry put 20 of the 27 cities it monitors for heatwaves on red alert on Friday. RAI public broadcaster said temperatures would go as high as 38 C in Florence and 37 C in Rome, Bologna and Perugia. Spain's Health Ministry estimates that 341 deaths have been attributable to heat-related illnesses since the beginning of June, as the country grapples with soaring temperatures. With the heat comes a higher risk of wildfires. Greece and other Mediterranean countries are in an area dubbed "a wildfire hotspot" by scientists - with blazes common during hot and dry summers. These have become more destructive in recent years due to a fast-changing climate, prompting calls for a new approach. "With multiple heatwaves and fire risks expected through September, there is an urgent need to shift from reactive response to proactive preparedness," the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said this week.
