by SYDNEY – At major events around the world, a scene of extreme heat is emerging. Old men, shirts undone, lying down with their eyes closed. Aid tents packed with the unconscious. And the lines of loyalists — be they seeking religion, music, ballot boxes or sport — sweating under shady slides.
The consequences were terrible. At this year’s hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia, at least 1,300 people died when temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And in many ways, that heavy toll was just the latest sign that crowd control and climate change-fueled heat waves are on a dangerous collision course.
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During the recent Indian election, dozens of poll workers died on the job. Last summer, a Boyz troupe visiting South Korea for a jubilee got sick from the heat, as did others at music festivals in Australia, Europe and North America.
Even when heat kills more people today than any other extreme weather event, there is still a dangerous cultural lag. Many organizers and attendees of major events are still behind the climate curve, failing to realize how much a warming planet has raised the risk to summer crowds.
“As the warm seasons get longer, as the heat waves come earlier, we’re going to have to adapt,” said Benjamin Zaitchik, a climate scientist at Johns Hopkins University who studies damaging climate events. for health. Along with personal behavior, he said, infrastructure, emergency management and social calendars “really need to acknowledge this new reality.”
High-tech ways to prevent illness and death include shade, water stations, sidewalks painted white to reflect heat and emergency health services to treat severe cases of heat stroke. Some hot and innovative places, like Singapore, have built public spaces that connect the outside and the inside. They added air conditioning to areas where people might have to spend time waiting, such as bus stops.
Perhaps the hardest solution of all is in some ways the simplest: educating people about the risks of heat, including those who are used to living in hot places. Often, they are unaware of the early symptoms of heat stress or how dangerous high temperatures are for people with pre-existing health conditions, such as kidney disease or hypertension. Even medicines, such as anticholinergic drugs, that treat allergies or asthma can accelerate problems by restricting sweat.
“Heat is a very complex and sneaky killer,” said Tarik Benmarhnia, an environmental researcher and associate professor at the University of California, San Diego. “It’s very quiet.”
A religious pilgrimage can be the most difficult event. Devotees of many faiths — Christians in the Philippines; Hindus in India; Muslims in Saudi Arabia – have died of heat stroke in the last few years during religious rituals.
But perhaps the hajj has the worst level of danger.
The entire Arabian Peninsula is hot and heating up quickly, and the temperature at night is also rising, stealing the hours when the body normally cools down. Hajj takes place over five to six days, which adds to the heat exposure in the holy city of Mecca.
The hajj calendar is also determined by the lunar cycle, so the scheduled times for the trip could be the hottest, as it was this year. And because pilgrims tend to be disproportionately old, they are more vulnerable to the effects of intense heat.
Benmarhnia was devastated when he heard the news of this year’s hajj deaths.
“I thought this could have happened to my grandmother,” he said by telephone Monday.
He paid for her trip to Mecca in 2019. She was 75 years old, but thankfully, he said, she went on a smaller pilgrimage during cooler weather, in April. With the death toll this year, he suggested that heat experts use what happened to quickly devise adaptation strategies with religious authorities.
The Saudi Ministry of Health had introduced educational campaigns urging people to stay hydrated and use umbrellas. Officers established field hospitals and water stations. They deployed thousands of paramedics.
It wasn’t nearly enough for the surge of millions, including many who bypassed national quotas to limit crowd size. And Saudi Arabia has been criticized for the deaths for its handling of the pilgrimage.
India’s election this year showed that even in places where people think they are used to heat, much more awareness is needed of the dangers of extreme heat.
In Bihar, at least 14 people died by the end of May, and at least 10 people were polling personnel, according to state disaster relief officials. At one point in June, nearly 100 people died within 72 hours in Odisha in cases suspected to be related to heat conditions.
Health officials in India had to prepare. Inside heat stroke units in Delhi hospitals, patients are immediately immersed in an ice-filled submersible tub to reduce their temperature. In a ward equipped with an ice-making refrigerator, ice boxes and ventilators, critically ill patients were immediately placed on slabs of ice and given cold fluids.
But in many areas, heat and voting peaked around the same time – including in the Aurangabad district of Bihar, home to 3 million people, where the temperature reached a desultory 48 degrees Celsius (118 Fahrenheit). late May.
Ravi Bhushan Srivastava, the chief medical officer at a government hospital, was on his way to assess the daily post-mortem reports on one particularly bad day, when 60 patients were admitted for heat stroke.
“At least 35 to 40 were in bad condition,” he said. “They were unconscious, changing consciousness, with very hot bodies and breathing difficulties.”
“I have never seen so many patients with heat stroke symptoms and such severity in my entire career,” he said.
Election rallies can be very vulnerable, because of the large crowds they involve. But there are also plenty of viable solutions. Aditya Valiathan Pillai, an adaptation specialist with the Sustainable Futures Collaborative, a research organization in Delhi, said attendees should be able to see real-time local temperatures, with color-coded levels of risk. Water stations, shade and cooling stations can be set up. In particular, public agencies should pull out the stops with earnings warnings. “We now have heat wave forecasts that are pretty accurate five days out,” Pillai said, “so this kind of awareness can be developed.”
Sporting events are already adapting to the dangers of extreme heat. Water breaks for players were introduced during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil when the combination of heat, humidity and sun exposure resulted in a temperature of 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Officials have moved the 2022 World Cup in Qatar from the summer months to November and December, when it is cooler.
The Paris Olympics seem to be seeking some kind of balance. Some events, like the marathon, are starting earlier in the day, and water stations are supposed to be available for patrons.
“Everyone who attends mega events like the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup has a duty of care,” said Madeleine Orr, a professor at the University of Toronto and author of the book “Warming Up: How Climate Change Is Sport.”
“We’re talking about hydration breaks and cooling breaks,” she said, “opportunities for athletes and officials to have access to cooling towels and some shade or mist fans, and medical staff on standby to step in if there’s extra care somebody needs it.”
For now, that might be enough. Many experts say more radical changes may need to follow. The Summer Olympics may have to be the Autumn Olympics. Similarly, elections in India may be pushed to cooler months, along with international tennis tournaments. School holidays may be rescheduled for the weather. Summer jobs such as painting houses can become spring jobs.
David Bowman, a climate scientist in Tasmania who wrote an article that gained widespread attention online during the 2020 Australian bushfires calling for an end to summer school holidays, said people were already starting to adapt in small ways. Umbrellas are becoming fashionable accessories for shade, shorts are becoming more acceptable at work and road workers are doing more at night.
Climate change could put more pressure on major events.
“All these disasters are like the price tag of cultural climate change,” he said. “Sure, we can be stubborn and push ourselves regardless of climate change – but, in the end, climate will win.”
c.2024 The New York Times Company
