Jump to content

Macedonia declares state of emergency due to heat wave

Unchecked
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Other stories from North Macedonia
Location of North Macedonia

A map showing the location of North Macedonia


The Macedonian government declared a nationwide state of emergency on Thursday in face of a heatwave that is predicted to get worse.

As forest fires rage across the country, temperatures of over 44°C (111°F) are predicted for the weekend. The emergency plan, which has been implemented for at least two weeks, reduces working hours to six hours a day, calls for special shifts for outdoors workers, and warns people to stay out of the sun and take other common sense precautions.

The new working hours for state and public workers are from 7am to 1pm indoors, and two shifts of 7am to 11am and 6pm to 8pm outdoors. All pregnant women have been given paid leave. Although these measures are not compulsory for the private sector the government has recommended that they are adopted where possible. It is expected that lost time will be made up through Saturday working over the rest of the year.

According to Pande Lazarevski, director of the government's Crisis Management center, over 200 fires have been registered across the country, destroying roughly 2,500 hectares of land, mainly forests.

Health services have seen an increase in emergency calls and the Red Cross has teams on stand-by.

Meteorologists have explained that the soaring temperatures are caused by a heat mass from Africa, and have predicted that temperatures will start dropping next weekend.

At least 35,000 people died in the European heatwave of 2003.

Sources

[edit]

Share this:  E-mail this story Share on Facebook Share on reddit.com Share on LinkedIn.com Share on twitter.com


This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
Retrieved from "https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Macedonia_declares_state_of_emergency_due_to_heat_wave"