'Melting Roads': Heat Wave Kills 1.1K in India

Reports of 122 degrees
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted May 26, 2015 5:09 PM CDT
'Melting Roads': Heat Wave Kills 1.1K in India
A man wipes sweat off his face in New Delhi, India.   (AP Photo/Tsering Topgyal)

A brutal heat wave has killed more than 1,100 people in India over the past week. How brutal? CNN reports temperatures of 117 degrees Fahrenheit, while the BBC is even higher at 122 degrees. A dispatch from AFP refers to "melting roads" in New Delhi. The vast majority of the deaths have come in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, generally among poorer people without access to air-conditioning or even electricity to run a fan. India's meteorological forecast calls for high temperatures to continue for two more days but warns that the respite that follows will probably be a short one.

"The state government has taken up education programs through television and other media to tell people not to venture into the outside without a cap, to drink water, and other measures," says an official from Andhra Pradesh. (More heat wave stories.)

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