Heat Fuels Fire, Fish Deaths and Tensions Over Protests in Eastern Europe
In Albania, across the Adriatic Sea from an Italy still sweltering from exceptionally high temperatures, a routine summer fire at a municipal dump in the central town of Elbasan turned into an out-of-control blaze.
Drained of energy by temperatures that reached 106 degrees Fahrenheit (41 Celsius), firefighters struggled to control it. And with clouds of toxic smoke wafting from the dump, protesters gathered outside the Ministry of Tourism and Environment in Tirana, the capital, declaring that it had been renamed 'the Ministry of Smoke and Pollution.'
As in Western European countries that were hammered this week by the heat wave, older people in Albania were suffering most. Fatmir Dervishaj, 76, said she usually went out during the day to play dominoes with her friends, but had been stuck at home because of the heat.
'Summer may be joyful for many, but for me, it feels very isolating,' she said.
For others, the misery was good for business. Ermir Metushi, 48, a taxi driver in Tirana, said that the heat wave was 'hard to endure' but that it had increased his earnings, because 'more and more people are giving in to the comfort of taxi air-conditioning, even for short distances.' That and a summer influx of tourists, he said, 'mean that I really can't complain.'
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