Thursday June 28, 12:53 AM    
*
Death Toll Rises as Scorching heat, floods wreak havoc across Europe*

Dozens of people across southern Europe have perished in a blistering
heatwave while storms whipped the north of the continent and floods
claimed four lives in Britain, officials said Wednesday.

In Greece, authorities said that the longest heatwave in the country's
history had killed five people, but media put the toll at at least 10.

"The weather conditions have been unprecedented, we have never had a
heat wave lasting for eight straight days," development ministry general
secretary Nikos Stefanou told private Flash Radio.

Athens on Tuesday registered temperatures of up to 46.2 degrees Celsius
(115.16 degrees Fahrenheit), the highest since recordings there began in
1955, the national weather service said.

The heat was expected to drop from Thursday, but Greek firefighters were
already having to deal with a dozen forests blazes in different parts of
the country.

In Romania, a 49-year-old man was killed when he was hit by a branch in
a violent storm that lashed the south of the country overnight to Wednesday.

A scorching heatwave had already claimed 29 lives, and Tuesday was the
hottest day of the year with temperatures topping 45 degrees Celsius in
Bucharest.

The national meteorological centre in Bucharest said that temperatures
were expected to become "more clement" from now on.

The toll in Turkey rose to three after a 57-year-old farmer and a
41-year-old labourer died of heart attacks linked to the ongoing
heatwave, Anatolia news agency reported.

Officials said temperatures in the largest city Istanbul hit a seasonal
record Wednesday of 43.1 degrees Celsius in the district of Sile, the
highest figure since weather services began keeping records in 1929.

In Bulgaria, hospital sources said two people have died from the heat
and over 50 people have collapsed in the streets of Sofia and Bulgaria's
second biggest city of Plovdiv.

Temperatures there reached 43 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, the highest
for a century, and across Bulgaria, energy consumption that day was 70
percent of what it is in winter, the national electricity firm said.

While the south was sweltering, Britain continued struggling to deal
with torrential rains and flooding which have killed four people in
recent days.

The fourth British death was confirmed overnight in Worcestershire,
west-central England, where police found the body of a motorist whose
car was swept away by floodwater, emergency services said.

Authorities in South Yorkshire were still monitoring a dam which is
threatening to burst, forcing the evacuation of some 700 residents,
although overall floodwater levels were reported to be receding across
the country.

Parts of Britain, particularly the Yorkshire area of northern England,
saw more than a month's rainfall in a day, and forecasters were
predicting this month will be the wettest June since records began.

In Germany, winds gusting at more than 100 kilometres (62 miles) an hour
disrupted maritime and rail traffic in the north of the country.

Nearly 440 tourists were forced to spend Tuesday night on the island of
Helgoland in the North Sea, camping in schools, fire stations and
hostels, a spokeswoman for the tourist office said.

A group of Austrian school children also spent the night in a gymnasium
there, she said, adding that they were expected to be stuck even longer
since "no boat will leave from Helgoland or travel to the island today."

Maritime traffic was expected to begin running again on Thursday, when
meteorologists predicted weather conditions would improve.

Heavier than usual rains across southern Sweden caused several small
dams to burst, flooding homes and industries and leading some 40 train
cancellations on Wednesday.

The dramatic weather conditions across Europe, as well as flooding in
Asia, prompted the United Nations' top disaster prevention official to
call for better global preparedness to cope with the impact of climate
change.

"We cannot wait to be taken by surprise, we know what is going to happen
and we can prepare for it," said Salvano Briceno, director of the UN
International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.