Red Cross takes to streets to help homeless during heatwave

The Red Cross has launched a campaign in Tarragona to help the homeless to cope with the heatwave. 

The charity group assisted thirteen people on Thursday in the organization's first such campaign. 

The thermometers read between 35-36°C at noon in the southern Catalan city. 

Volunteers from the social emergency unit offered fresh water, hats, and sunscreen to people on the street for more than two hours during the morning, as well as basic advice to deal with the high temperatures, such as recommending that they take shelter in places with shade or that they take refuge in the climatic shelters of the city. 

The volunteer workers passed through the streets of the city center, from the Rambla Nova and the neighborhoods of Serrallo and Part Alta. 

"Today, we took a risk, there must always be a first time," the leader of the volunteer program, Omar Kassem, told the Catalan News Agency. "I thought we wouldn't find so many people and we served thirteen, the trip was worth it." 

Calls to develop a summer protocol

The humanitarian organization has also called on the city council to implement an action plan to help people deal with the heat, similar to their 'Operation Igloo' which takes place in winter. 

Kassem regretted that the city does not have an action protocol to attend to homeless people when temperatures are extremely high, as they were this week.

In fact, Kassem said that a few years ago, when there was a heatwave similar to the current one going on, there was already talk of drawing up a plan which ultimately was not carried out.

He asked the government team to sit down and design the necessary actions: "There should be a desert operation or by some other name, we need to collaborate with the council and coordinate with the local police, as we have always done, and offer the service as we do in the winter."

The volunteers plan to go out again on Friday to repeat the route, and they do not rule out extending the service if the heat persists in the coming days.