QUEUE! WHAT A SCORCHER
Hundreds queue for 2 hours for cooling dip at outdoor pool – before power cut closes it
HUNDREDS queued for up to two hours in blistering heat yesterday just to take a cooling dip.
A 950ft line snaked all around Ilkley Lido, in West Yorks — only for their relief to be cut short when the pool was closed by a power cut.
4
Northern Powergrid said in all 14,500 properties in Yorks, Lincs and the North East were hit as equipment overheated.
Hospital appointments were axed amid a red “danger to life” warning as a record-breaking temperature of 40.3C (104F) was recorded at RAF Coningsby in Lincs.
And at one point the NHS’s heat exhaustion and heat stroke section of its website was being viewed 63 times every minute.
Schools shut and rail firms urged against all but essential travel for a second day running.
MORE ON THE HEATWAVE
Kings Cross was all but deserted after London North Eastern Railway’s unprecedented decision to shelve services to Leeds and York.
The station, one of the busiest in Europe, normally sees 220,000 passengers pass through each day but the main concourse was virtually empty during rush-hour.
Most Thameslink and Great Northern services were also axed, with only limited services from London Euston, Marylebone and on the East Midlands Railway.
And all trains were stopped at Birmingham New Street station after a power line fault.
Most read in The Sun
Meanwhile the melting A14 was forced to close in Cambridgeshire.
Asked if the transport system was equipped to deal with rapidly rising temperatures, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps replied grimly: “The simple answer, at the moment, is no.”
He added: “Where those tracks are 40 degrees in the air, on the ground that could be 50, 60, 70 and more, so you get a severe danger of tracks buckling.
“What we can’t have is trains running over those and a terrible derailing.”
He said it would take “decades” to replace the tracks with ones capable of withstanding hotter summers.
And he went on: “Ditto with Tarmac on the roads. There’s a long process of replacing it and upgrading it to withstand temperatures — either very hot or sometimes much colder than we’ve been used to.”
There are now growing fears of a drought after the Met Office warned temperatures for the next three months would remain above average.
4
4
4
It issued a yellow warning for thunderstorms and downpours today but said that would do little to ease concern.
Reservoirs — including Wayoh, at Edgworth, near Bolton — are already worryingly low for this time of year after demand sky-rocketed amid the heatwave.
It could lead to hosepipe bans and even draconian measures not seen since the major drought of 1976.
Forecaster Nicola Maxey said: “The UK has already seen significantly low rainfall totals so far this summer.
“Some areas have seen no rain whatsoever this July and the outlook is for the country to continue producing above average temperatures.”
The Met Office said the UK has seen only 20 per cent of its average rainfall this month.
The City of London has seen none while Kent, Hants and Surrey have had just one per cent.
Met Office boss Penny Endersby warned: “We are still seeing hotter than average temperatures in our three-month outlook.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
Read More on The Sun
“Once we’re past these two days we’re not seeing any significant rain coming up.”
Karen Gibbs, Senior Policy Manager at the Consumer Council for Water, said: “The next few weeks and months will be critical.”
Topics