HEAT WAVE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 416, 26 July 1928, Page 11

HEAT WAVE

Germs Flourishing, Policemen Levelled

DOCTORS OVERWORKED

(United P.A. —By Teiegrapn — Copyright) (United Service) Reed. noon. LONDON, Wed. London has had its hottest night in 27 years, with a temperature throughout of 66 degrees. An official drought has been proclaimed. Several well-known lakes in the vicinity of London have been dried up. The heat wave, which extends from the Red Sea across Europe to New York, is giving England its longest period of fine weather since the record summer of 1911. It shows no signs of abating after 19 days. The temperature in London varies from 32 to 90 degrees at noon to 75 degrees at midnight. This is high in a city where 100 degrees has only once been recorded. Extraordinary incidents are attributed to the sudden change from a month’s cold weather. Dense fogs on the coasts are hampering shipping worse than in winter.

Nihety Bow Street policemen are off duty through digestive trouble. According to the overworked medical men “every kind of germ seems to have come out cold storage.” What is stranger still is that the people at England’s seaside resorts, which normally are crowded with holi-day-makers at this season of the year, are complaining that the hotels are half empty. The drought has assumed more serious proportions on the Continent. For instance, in the Fiume Valley the Italian ecclesiastical authorities have sanctioned the parading of a statue of the Madonna of Sorrows. This is only permitted in periods of the most grave distress. The statue is conveyed at the head of a procession, ■which marches through the valley while the people pray for rain.