Perhaps the workplace of the 33-year-old is the hottest of the city on this day, for which the German Weather Service yesterday issued a heat warning. It may be hotter, perhaps, only at the blast furnaces of the steelworks, Menninger suspects. His colleagues and he paved the track of the line 4 with wear safety clothing, they have been there since seven o'clock, and only the trees at the edge donate some shade. "180 degrees from below and 30 degrees from above," says the wheel loader, whose taut upper body is strongly browned. He usually wears a cap at such temperatures, but he also wants to brown his face evenly.
Menninger wears sunglasses and uses sun cream; many of his colleagues do not. He is in a good mood - although his shift is twelve hours long and not until 19 hours. There is only one thing that really upsets him: "You're always hot." Henning eats lye sticks to restore to his body the salt he loses by sweating. For breakfast, there was watermelon, "what refreshing". Breaks do not make Henning more often than on other days - the pressure is great on the construction site, when the summer holidays are over, it has to be finished.
"We have to get out of our way for five minutes every now and then," Kendal Celia says, working a few hundred yards further along the tracks and dragging straight on the curb. He pulled out his T-shirt; he wears the safety vest over the free upper body. He drinks four liters a day, says Celia. Sometimes his colleague’s splash and he is wet with the water of a hydrant to cool down. "Otherwise, there is no way to get fresh." The 34-year-old buys his drinks in the supermarket a few meters further. Some companies, such as the Bremen-based Mercedes-Benz plant, supply their employees with free mineral water in summer. Or they place fans in the workrooms. This is not possible at the construction site. While his employer provides additional water, Kendal Celia says - "but that is too far away". Weaknesses had already existed on the construction site, because suddenly there was a long one.
From the construction site to the seniors' home: here, too, sweats are being made, and here too many of the inhabitants wear kepi like the construction workers and eat melons. To drink a lot, that's the most important, says David. "There are inhabitants who love the warmth and sit in the blazing sun," says the nursing manager of the Evangelical Deaconess Mother's House in Bremen. Older people often felt no thirst and often forgot to drink. Even if no one has collapsed in his facility this summer: in the emergency rooms of the Bremen hospitals, there have already been some cases of dehydration in the past few days. Even people who had to deal with cardiovascular complaints because of the heat were taken to the clinics. "Many of the residents complain of dizziness," says Nasik.
"The weather is very demanding for seniors", confirms Antje Sorensen of the Bremer. Especially after the long winter, which fed on the strengths of the high-earned? The house management therefore offers to the inhabitants light soups or cold dishes - they should not lie in the bed despite the warmth. Marlon Henning, the brown-tanned construction worker from the tracks, knows how to end his day after twelve hours in the heat of the heat: "In the lake - or a walk in the forest." The exhaustion, he says, he can only feel later.
Heat warning of the German Weather Service
Wednesday, there is again a heat warning of the German weather service for Bremen. Such a warning is issued if the temperature exceeds 32 degrees Celsius for two consecutive days. However, this threshold is variable. "At the beginning of June, for example, if people are not yet adapted to the temperatures, we are warned at lower values," explains Christina in reflective vest, a medical meteorologist at the German Weather Service. There is an additional condition that must be fulfilled before a heat warning is issued: "At night, it does not cool too much." For cooling means for the human organism the possibility to regenerate itself.
