Reader Q&A: your questions about Europe’s hellish week of heat – live now

Europe is gripped by a severe heatwave, and cities are responding in contrasting ways. According to Guardian correspondent Ajit Niranjan, Denmark has deployed a powerful weapon: seventeen hundred volunteers at a senior citizens association who take turns calling elderly people to check in on them. It's a decades-old system that's proving crucial now, since older people are massively overrepresented in heat-related deaths. In Berlin, which hit thirty-nine degrees Celsius over the weekend, police even deployed water cannons to cool people down in the streets—though not everyone heeded the warning. The correspondent's best advice: check in on people who live alone.

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