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BANNU, June 12: Two people died and scores of others were affected by the unrelenting heatwave in the NWFP on Tuesday. Frequent power outages also forced the people to take to streets to protest against Pesco.
Some 15 people were brought to the District Headquarters Hospital, Bannu, after they suffered heatstroke.
One victim of heatstroke jumped into the swimming pool of a hotel to cool him off, but he drowned.
Residents of the area held a rally in the sizzling heat in protest against prolonged power failures. They blocked the Bannu-Miramshah road for two hours and warned that they would ransack Pesco installations if loadshedding was not stopped immediately.
MANSEHRA: The quake-hit Balakot town and other adjacent areas experienced the worst temperature amid the outbreak of scabies and gastroenteritis epidemics, officials said. The heatwave hit Balakot after an interval of 23 years as the people remembered the town experienced the temperatures like this summer’s in 1984.
Officials at the meteorological department in Peshawar told Dawn by telephone that the temperature in Balakot over the last three days remained between 40 and 41 degrees Celsius.
It touched 42 degrees on Tuesday. Temperatures in Mansehra, Battagram and Kohistan were recorded at 41 degrees Celsius.
Mohammad Riaz, director of the meteorological record department in Lahore, told Dawn that the highest temperature in Balakot was 42 degrees Celsius in 1984.
Cases of scabies and gastroenteritis are on the rise in Balakot. Doctors said that every household was suffering from scabies and gastroenteritis because of the prevailing unhygienic condition in the town, with gastroenteritis cases among children reaching an alarming proportion.
SWABI: A man died of heatstroke in the district on Tuesday.
According to eyewitnesses, Faizullah had come to district courts to attend the hearing of a case. He fell unconscious at a mohrar’s office and died on the spot.
All bazaars and streets in the district looked deserted as the mercury touched 44 to 45 degrees centigrade.
