Nation: Weather : Heat that Kills

Baikuntha Biswal, a crack reporter with an Oriya daily in Bhubaneswar, rushed out of his house on the morning of May 28, claiming that was the day he was going to get a "big story" in the bag. Outside in the sun, it was a scorcher at 41 degrees Celsius (four degrees above normal for the city), but Biswal had little else apart from the story on his mind. As he went about checking his facts along the bylanes of the old city, he felt the heat make his skin burn. Minutes later, he just blacked out on the road. He was taken home first, then rushed to a nearby hospital where surprised doctors were suddenly facing a deluge of heat-stroke patients. Usually, heat stroke patients are asked to lie over ice slabs but the hospital had none and the doctors had no inkling that the sun would fell so many. Biswal, consumed by a raging fever, died four hours later. It was just the beginning of an apocalyptic situation in Orissa where more than 950 people died in just over a week of intense heat. Biswal's wife, still numb with shock, whispers, "It was totally unnecessary. He could so easily have been saved."

A great, unexpected heat is searing through India this summer, scorching the landscape, singeing everyone who comes in contact. It isn't the usual hot summer that melts the tar on the road, makes the inside of your car feel like a greenhouse and reduces the ceiling fan to a hopelessly ineffective instrument. This is a heat that kills. It had by the first few days of June claimed 1,782 victims -- apart from Orissa, 441 in Andhra Pradesh, 220 in Rajasthan and 150 in Uttar Pradesh (see graphic). It has sent meteorology offices all over the country in a tizzy, recording temperatures that they hadn't in decades. It is already being termed as one of the hottest spells ever affecting places even in the usually cool coastal areas. Some even go as far as to say this could be the all-time longest spell of severe heat. Says S.R. Kalsi, deputy director-general at the Indian Meteorology Department (IMD) and after the prime minister, the man most sought-after by the press: "The sequence of heat has remained unbroken this time, that's why it is so severe."

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And that's why this shimmering mass of heat has hijacked every conversation. "Severe", by IMD standards, basically means that the temperature recorded at a particular place is seven degrees or more above what it normally is at that time of the year. It is this sudden surge in temperature that is proving fatal, with stories of sudden death circulating all over the country. In Orissa, a police constable suddenly falls while directing vehicular traffic; in Rajasthan, a 10-year-old swoons and falls as he lugs water up the hill to his village; in Ahmedabad a cyclist collapses mid-pedal -- the list goes on and on. Normally, an intense heat wave gets punctuated by what weathermen call "westerly disturbances" or local weather phenomena like thunder showers or a dust storm that brings down temperatures. But that hasn't happened this time. There is intense speculation about why it hasn't happened, with El Nino (an unusual warming of the South Pacific Ocean that disturbs weather patterns) being cited as one of the factors, though there is no direct evidence to prove this as yet. Adds S.C. Gupta, director of the Met Office at Safdarjang, Delhi: "By now, we should have had three to four such disturbances but there was only one. So the sun keeps on blazing." That's why Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh has been rechristened by residents as "Blazewada", the temperature there remaining steady at 42 degrees Celsius for two weeks in a row. Leading to bizarre things -- for the first time, tokens were issued for bodies waitlisted at the crematorium as 48 funerals took place on June 1. Crematorium attendants made hay while the sun shone, charging Rs 100 per body instead of the usual Rs 20.

The administration showed equal callousness. Even after the huge casualties, most bureaucrats bundled up the issue in red tapism, claiming that "heat deaths" weren't a concern of theirs. In Orissa, the official reaction, given by Revenue Secretary Jugal Mahapatra, was that an intense summer could not be categorised as a natural calamity and thus no relief could be given. But as the death toll rose, so did tempers. The state health minister was chased by an angry mob outside a Bhubaneswar hospital and the chief minister finally had to intervene, announcing Rs 10,000 ex-gratia relief to the victims' families. But the other states didn't follow suit. In Agra, where there were reports of even foreign tourists succumbing to the sun (at least three, according to Arun Dang, president of the Agra Tourist Guild), the administration didn't budge. Agra Commissioner S.P. Gaur explained, "You can't pinpoint a heat death because it isn't a one-time phenomenon." Unlike, say a flood or an earthquake that occurs within a short timeframe and in which casualties can be easily identified, a heat wave often rages, subsides and can rage again. Besides, the Government claimed, it was difficult to pinpoint heat as the exact cause of death. This led to utter confusion in death tolls as most administrations refused to acknowledge "heat deaths". In Rajasthan, for instance, the official death toll was as low as 40, while regional dailies put it at close to 250. Most victims, the Government claimed, were above 60 and very probably near death, "Their date of death was just moved up by the heat."

Scientists confirm that "heat deaths" aren't easy to prove. The heat kills by destroying the cooling system of the body. The body cools itself by secreting sweat that evaporates. But intense heat has the ability to suck up every bit of fluid in the body. Once that happens, the sweating stops and the blood temperature (the usual 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit that you see on the thermometer) starts rising. Once it reaches 106 to 110 degrees, the body starts disintegrating. "You feel faint, disoriented, the liver starts to become dysfunctional, the kidneys get affected and your respiratory system packs up," says J.N. Pande, professor of medicine at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi.

Adds Ganesh Pichan, a scientist at the Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences who specialises in heat physiology, "This finally leads to a condition called heat hyperpyrexia in which because the arteries dilate, blood collects in the lower limbs leading to brain damage." The symptoms usually start with muscle cramps due to a loss of salt and water. If this isn't treated, it leads to "heat exhaustion" where there is extreme fatigue and confusion. Culminating in hyperpyrexia which, when it sets in, can kill within seconds. It then becomes very important to diagnose and identify the heat exhaustion stage to check death. But, as Pande adds, "It becomes difficult as the symptoms can be confused with that of malaria."

Besides confusing the doctors, the heat did other strange and quirky things too. In a Kalahandi Cup (Orissa's most famous inter-state cricket tournament) match played during the heat wave, players had more than the usual rules of one-day cricket to play by. With the sky spewing fire and mercury pushing above 48 degrees Celsius, players were instructed to keep raw onions that are known to have a cooling effect in their pockets. So were the officiating umpires. The organisers were thinking of making this mandatory for the spectators -- but nobody turned up. Similarly, in Lucknow, relatives who were taking a heat victim's body to Kanpur by bus decided to act on the side of caution. The mourners were seen packing the bus roof with crates of Pepsi and cases of mineral water. In Bhopal, Pepsi and Coca-Cola are being shunned for the indigenous kiari ka panha (an extract of raw, boiled mangoes) not due to a swadeshi backlash but because the juice is an effective antidote for heat stroke.

The stories can, and will, continue endlessly. It's frightening to figure out that almost 2,000 people can die with no one to blame except the sun. Already in the minds of many, the great heat of 1998 has become a sort of benchmark that will gauge the intensity of future summers. Said a group of sarpanches in Dholpur, perhaps echoing a larger call, "Freakish weather has become a sign of the times. We must be be doing something wrong."

DHOLPUR
Life at 49.8C

Out here in the sun, everything is as glittery as mica. Your impression in the first few minutes, "Hey, I can take this." But then it happens. Suddenly, a fine film of sweat covers your entire person. The intensity of the heat seems incessant -- creeping into your skin, dulling your vision and weighing you down. Very soon your legs feel leaden and the soles are aflame. The sweat turns into a deluge, streaking out of your pores like bullets, and up ahead everything turns gloomy, the sun a low-voltage bulb. Time to run back into the shade before you keel over, let the sweat freeze, making you feel as if you've been dipped into a schlocky margarita, too heavy on the salt. Check your watch -- you'd been out just 10 minutes in the sun.

This is Bari town in Dholpur, Rajasthan, where torrid tar roads stay deserted right through the day and saline drip bottles are being sold at a premium. Summer in Dholpur -- located on the edge of the Chambal ravines and surrounded by red-stone hills -- has always been akin to a furnace blast. But they've learnt to shoehorn the heat into their schedules. People here venture out before 10 a.m. or after 5 p.m. -- in between they lie comatose in dark rooms with as little on as possible. Sleep patterns have reversed: night time is for socialising with maybe a siesta thrown in, daytime for serious snoozing. Children play a game of counting dust devils that rise in the hot plains in swirls of thorns and sticks and night-time entertainment centres on watching bush fires that garland the hills like ceremonial lights. "People here pride themselves on having developed heat resistance ... yet this year we've learnt that our resistance has a limit," says Subdivisional Magistrate Hari Mohan Meena.

On May 27 this summer, the mercury inched up to 49.8 degrees. That, in itself, didn't faze anyone. Heck, just three years ago, it had touched 50. What made everyone hot under the collar was the fact that for the first time, the average temperature stayed above 48 for a straight fortnight. "That kind of broke us this year," says Srikhand Gujjar, a sarpanch at Aangi village. Usually, a hot spell here ends with gusts of westerly winds and galloping clouds that often block the sun. Not this time. The sun blazed away in a dull grey sky. And down below, all hell broke loose. After many years there were several deaths due to heat stroke and though the administration doesn't record "heat deaths", the local press estimated 50 deaths in the region. Adds Meena, "Children and the elderly were the first to collapse."

Summer survival is down to a fine art here. And number one on the Heat Survival Guide is the safa -- a metre-long, multi-patterned piece of cloth -- which you don't leave home without. Not surprisingly, there is a safa fashion code that has a definite pecking order. The urbane townie sort of drapes it round his head, the villager prefers tying it firmly. The crudos use a much bigger cloth and even press neem leaves on the scalp (keeps the head cool and avoids prickly heat) before tying the safa. The other big thing is raw onion that everyone carries around in his pocket; you see dim silhouettes in the shade munching on them or rubbing them on their hands and the soles of their feet. Besides, unlike the big-city man who lurches between blast furnace and air-conditioning they've long understood the merits of avoiding extremes. Here, as the adage goes, you stay in and in case you are forced out, you stay out until it gets cool enough for the others to come out and cremate you.