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State reeling under severe heatwave

— Photo: Ashoke Chakrabarty

COOL TOUCH: A baby elephant is enjoying the flash of water at Nandankanan Zoological Park in Bhubaneswar on Monday.

BHUBANESWAR: As most parts of the State continued to reel under an intense heatwave and four deaths due to sunstroke were officially confirmed on Monday, the State government declared that all private and government-run schools would remain closed for summer vacation starting from Tuesday.

The Chief Minister issued the orders in this regard after he reviewed the heatwave situation at a high-level meeting at the State Secretariat here. Mr. Patnaik announced that the families of those killed due to sunstroke would be paid an ex gratia of Rs. 10,000 each from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund.

He also ordered that special arrangements should be made in all government hospitals and community health centres across the State to treat those suffering from sunstroke.

There should be arrangement of air-conditioners or air-coolers for the treatment of such patients.

The Chief Minister also ordered the Secretary in the Energy Department to monitor the situation on a regular basis to ensure uninterrupted power supply.

Further, Mr. Patnaik directed all the departments concerned to work on a war-footing to repair the defunct tubewells in both urban and rural areas of the State.

He further issued instructions that the publicity campaign should be conducted at a wider scale to make people aware of the precautionary measures they should take to cope with extreme heat.

So far, at least 22 deaths due to sunstroke have been reported from different districts of the State.

The authorities, however, claimed that only four of them had been confirmed to be have taken place due to sunstroke.

Of the remaining cases, 13 had been found to be deaths due to other reasons and official reports were awaited in five cases. In many cases the deaths could not be proved to be due to sunstroke primarily due to absence of post-mortem reports.

Several places in the State have been experiencing temperatures over 40 degree Celsius during the past few days, and weather department has indicated that the heatwave conditions were likely to prevail for a few more days.

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