Cape Breton Regional Municipality promises more help for those vulnerable in extreme heat

The sun was beating down in Cape Breton on Thursday, and the humidity was sky-high. To some, it was welcome. To others, it felt relentless.

"We're certainly not prepared. We've been caught off guard,” said Tom Urbaniak, a political scientist at Cape Breton University.

Urbaniak said with extreme heat seeming to become more commonplace, some Maritime cities need to do more to protect those most vulnerable.

He said that includes the elderly, the homeless and people who live in poverty and might not have access to things like air conditioning.

"I'm very worried that people will die because of hot weather,” Urbaniak said.

He pointed to hundreds of deaths last summer during a heat wave in British Columbia as an example Maritime leaders can learn from.

"We need to have some sort of public cooling spaces available, and we need to make people aware of those,” Urbaniak said.

Cape Breton Regional Municipality mayor Amanda McDougall said the concerns are being heard and they're looking at places across the municipality where places to cool down could be opened up.

"Our staff right now are really, really working hard on identifying where those cooling stations could be,” McDougall said. "These are temperatures that we are not accustomed to. This is not typical of the beginning of August in Cape Breton."

Meanwhile, the Town House in Glace Bay, N.S., took it upon themselves to open up their basement as a place to cool down. Despite complaints about the heat, no one was there on Thursday.

"Well I suppose they don't know that it's open,” said board member Agatha MacMullin. “Now they know. So tomorrow we figure we'll have some people."

CTV Atlantic meteorologist Kalin Mitchell said it's the humidex values that made days like Thursday particularly uncomfortable.

He added that feel-like temperatures will be much the same the next few days.

“Some of those are going to be up around the mid-to-high 30s, and at times in some areas even near 40,”Mitchell said.

So when can we expect some relief?

"We're looking towards Monday/Tuesday time frame of next week,” Mitchell said. “That looks like when there's going to be a few rounds of showers, maybe even some rain that comes through, and temperatures will come down with that."