Pakistan heat wave eases after more than 1,150 die

KARACHI: Sea breezes brought cooler temperatures on Friday to ease a heat wave that killed more than 1,150 people over a week around Pakistan’s teeming port city of Karachi.
Meanwhile, Pakistani welfare volunteers held a mass funeral for 50 victims of Karachi’s worst heatwave in decades, whose bodies had gone unclaimed.
The extreme heat of up to 44 degrees Celsius, the hottest since 1981, coincided with power failures and triggered sharp criticism of the government’s response in the city of 20 million people.
The crisis, following a heat wave in India last month that killed about 2,500 people, illustrates how ill-prepared many developing nations are for the extreme weather conditions that scientists say will accompany global climate change in coming decades.
“These type of events are taking place across the world ... we need to prepare ourselves and develop our strategy,” said Qamar uz Zaman Chaudhry, the Islamabad-based special adviser for Asia to the UN-World Meteorological Organization.