Indian heatwave kills 450 May 16, 2002 HYDERABAD, India: A heatwave has killed 450 people in the past week in the sweltering coastal belt of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, a state relief official said. Fresh reports of deaths, mainly among the poor, elderly, and laborers such as agricultural workers and rickshaw pullers, pushed the official toll to 450 since May 10, said Jagdish Reddy, the assistance secretary of relief. Temperatures were as high as 41 degrees Celsius today along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, he said. The temperature had fallen in the capital, Hyderabad, and in some coastal cities, such as Vijaywada, 270 kilometres to the east, where it dropped from 49 degrees Celsius last week to 36 degrees today, said Meteorological Centre director CVV Bhadram in Hyderabad. "I have seen many summers but nothing like this year," said Bheemudu, 44, a rickshaw puller of Vijaywada who uses only one name. "When the hot wind hit my face, I felt as if I was set on fire." Bheemudu said he could not work for four days "and it was very difficult to survive without working. Even nights were unbearably hot." Light rain gave some relief yesterday, and the heat wave warning was withdrawn for many areas. The boost in humidity was uncomfortable, but many people resumed work. It has been an abnormally hot May, the peak of the northern summer in southern India, with dry winds blowing from the northwestern deserts much earlier than usual. Temperatures have been seven per cent higher than normal for the month. New Delhi and other parts of north India also were wilting under a hot spell, but summer has hit southerners the hardest. The heat wave in Andhra Pradesh has come as a shock because the state "is far ahead of other states in increasing the green cover and in conservation of water," said Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, the top elected official in the state. Naidu said a committee of scientists would look into whether the heat wave had anything to do with global warming.
