Life and death in the heat. What it feels like when Earth's temperatures soar to record highs
Morocco's Middle Atlas, people were sleeping on rooftops. Hanna Ouhbour needed refuge too, but she was outside a hospital waiting for her diabetic cousin who was in a room without air conditioning. On Wednesday, there were 21 heat-related deaths at Beni Mellal's main hospital as temperatures spiked to 48.3 degrees (118.9 degrees Fahrenheit) in the region of 5,75,000 people, most lacking air conditioning.
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«We don't have money and we don't have a choice,» said Ouhbour, a 31-year-old unemployed woman from Kasba Tadla, an even warmer city that some experts say is among the hottest on Earth.
«The majority of the deaths were among people suffering from chronic diseases and the elderly, as the high temperatures contributed to the deterioration of their health condition and led to their death,» Kamal Elyansli, the regional director of health, said in a statement.
This is life and death in the heat.
As the warming Earth sizzled through a week with four of the hottest days ever measured, the world focused on cold, hard numbers that showed the average daily temperature for the entire planet.
But the 17.16 degrees Celsius (62.8 degrees Fahrenheit) reading recorded on Monday doesn't convey how oppressively sticky any one particular place became at the peak of sunshine and humidity. The thermometer doesn't tell the story of warmth that just wouldn't go away at night so
