European tourists are flocking to America’s Death Valley to experience near-record-breaking heat that has already proved deadly.
The searing heatwave across large parts of the US has taken temperatures in the national park, one of the hottest places on the planet, to 50C and beyond.
While Death Valley officials warn visitors about the threats posed by the punishing heat, some say that’s the exact reason they’ve come. French, Spanish, English and Swiss tourists were among the visitors to Death Valley on Monday, the Associated Press reported.
“It’s impressive,” Thomas Mrzliek of Basel, Switzerland, said of the heat. “It [sic] like a wave that hits when you get out of the car, but it’s a very dry heat. So it’s not as in Europe.”
Another visitor to Death Valley said experiencing the high temperatures was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity”.
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“I was excited it was going to be this hot,” said Drew Belt, a resident of Tupelo, Mississippi.
A high of 53.3C was recorded on Saturday and Sunday, just shy of the record 54.4C reported in 2021. The mercury allegedly hit 56.6C in 1913, but that recording has since been contested.
The temperatures in Death Valley have already claimed the life of one visitor, who died on Saturday from heat exposure. Another person was taken to hospital with “severe heat illness”. The two visitors were part of a group of six motorcyclists riding through the Badwater Basin area, the park said in a statement over the weekend.
Emergency medical helicopters were unable to respond, as the aircraft cannot generally fly safely in temperatures exceeding 48.8C.
Mike Reynolds, the park superintendent, cautioned visitors in a statement that “high heat like this can pose real threats to your health.”
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“While this is a very exciting time to experience potential world record-setting temperatures in Death Valley, we encourage visitors to choose their activities carefully, avoiding prolonged periods of time outside of an air-conditioned vehicle or building when temperatures are this high,” Reynolds said.
California wildfires map
Officials warned that heat illness and injury were cumulative and could build over the course of a day or several days. In the US, about 36 million people — or about 10 per cent of the population — live in areas that are currently under excessive heat warnings, the National Weather Service’s highest alert.
The extreme heat, coupled with a long-standing drought in the West, has also dried out vegetation that can fuel wildfires — around 19 of which are burning in California at present.
In Santa Barbara County, in southern California, more than 26,000 acres of land are engulfed in flames. The fire broke out on Friday and only 12 per cent of it had been contained by Tuesday morning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Several evacuation orders have been issued for homes near the fire, including Michael Jackson’s famed Neverland.
