firefighters used helicopters to battle intense flames and smoke near athens greece on saturday soaring temperatures fueled the wildfires across the country several homes were destroyed and residents were ordered to evacuate at least five people were hospitalized due to the fires more than 50 wildfires have broken out across the country since friday

Extreme heat has this extraordinary quality of being what we call a silent killer, which means that we don't really see what happens.

And in Greece in particular, but in many countries around the world, we don't really know how many people have died from it.

So this is a very big issue.

How do you... know what the impact is.

And we've just started gathering these types of information.

A very, very small percentage of people that die from heat die from heat stroke.

Whether it's from intense rain, strong winds, heavy snow, or another weather type, these warnings are designed to let people, businesses, governments, and emergency responders know what weather is in store and what the impacts

I mean, w- are all of these deaths preventable? Could they have been prevented?

Yes, they could have been prevented.

I really believe, I, I really believe that the vast majority of the people that we're losing due to extreme heat, if we had been more, um, if we've been thinking about this earlier, uh, we could have prevented them.

We could make, you know, the right kind of building codes that can create our buildings, um, differently.

The design our d- our buildings differently so that, um, they're not ovens for the people that live in them.

Um, we could, um, make sure that we have cities that are much, much greener.

Uh, we could make sure that people that, uh, uh, know better the, the, the, the dangers that they're facing when they're working or when they are in, uh, conditions that, where their bodies are, are heating up much, um, in, in ways that are d-dangerous for their health.

Is that the answer?

Mm-hmm.

They're built taking heat into consideration and also figuring out how to make cooling more sustainable.

The shorter measures are the things that cities have to issue during heatwaves.

So, uh, make sure that they have cooling centers for people that do not have access to electricity or to air conditioning or to fans or stuff like that, to make sure that they can go to a place where they're safe.

A lot of cities open up and make sure that their citizens understand that they can access public places that have air conditioning anyway, like public libraries, or open up swimming pools for free.

Other cities create, like in, for example, in Athens, when, when I used to, to be the deputy mayor in Athens, what we did is we had these old people's homes where the old, elderly could go and have a cup of coffee and play games during the day, and these were places that were air-conditioned.

Because it's important for the body to be at least for three or four hours in temperatures that can lower our internal temperatures to levels that are normal.

But it, it's, it's ended up that many people have, have lost their lives.

So what should people be doing to stay cool in this intense heat?

There are a couple of things that they should be doing as soon as temperatures start rising, and one is to avoid peak heat hours, so stay out of the sun between 11 and 4.Hydrate regularly.

Cool the body directly whenever possible, so put water directly on the skin, like taking showers.

Make sure that you're under shade as much as possible and have light clothing on you.

So all of this is like to keep the body cool.

Keep your home shaded, so during the day make sure that you close blinds and curtains and open it up during the night.

So the last thing which is really super, super important is to look after the vulnerable people because we have to kind of make sure that we take care of the elderly and the children, the outdoor workers, women.

So what other ideas and solutions have you looked at?