OTTAWA: Hundreds of deaths in Canada, and in the US states of Oregon and Washington may have been caused by the historic heat wave that baked the Pacific Northwest and shattered all-time temperature records in usually temperate cities. Oregon health officials said that more than 60 deaths have been tied to the heat, with the state’s largest county, Multnomah, blaming the weather for 45 deaths since the heat wave began.
In Canada’s British Columbia, chief coroner Lisa Lapointe said her office received reports of at least 486 “sudden and unexpected deaths.” Normally, she said about 165 people would die in the province over a five-day period. “While it is too early to say with certainty how many of these deaths are heat related, it is believed that the significant increase in deaths reported is attributable to the extreme weather,” LaPointe said in a statement.
Like in Washington’s city of Seattle, many homes in Vancouver, British Columbia, don’t have air conditioning. “Vancouver has never experienced temperature of 49.6°C. Washington state authorities had linked more than 20 deaths to the heat, but that number was likely to rise. The heat wave was caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of high pressure over the Northwest and worsened by human-caused climate change, which is making such extreme weather events more likely and more intense.
