Bhubaneswar, May 2 (Inditop) Orissa Saturday confirmed three more deaths due to sunstroke taking the toll due to heat wave sweeping across the state to 21.
“Three more deaths due to sunstroke were confirmed,” B. Singh, officer on special duty in the state revenue control room told Inditop.
“While two persons died in the district of Balasore, one person died in the district of Bargarh,” he said adding that the three died this week.
“The state government has received allegations of about 84 deaths since March and 25 of them were found to be deaths due other reasons. Reports related to the 38 other deaths are still awaited from the concerned district administrations,” he said.
Raghunath Mohanty, a grocery shop owner from Angul town – which recorded more than 45 degrees Celsius in the past few days told Inditop: “Life was horrible during the peak hour. We were not comfortable at home under the fan.”
S.C. Sahu, director of the Bhubaneswar meteorological centre said: “In the interior part of the state the maximum temperature has remained between 44 plus minus two degrees over past several days.”
On Friday western Orissa towns of Sambalpur, Jharsuguda, Titilagarh and Bolangir recorded 46.2, 45.6, 45.5 and 45.2 degrees Celsius temperature respectively, he said, adding that the heat wave condition was likely to prevail in the interior part of the state during next 48 hours.
More than 2,000 people had died in a severe heat wave that swept the state May 1998.
rounak