ZURICH\/BERLIN, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Authorities failed to grasp the scale of risk to human life posed by heatwaves, the CEO of reinsurer \u200cSwiss Re was quoted as saying on Sunday, as some German \u200cstates eased trucking restrictions to lower weather-related pressure on shipping.<\/p>\n
Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent, has reported \u200bthousands of excess deaths during a record-breaking heatwave, most of them people aged 65 and above. France and Spain have faced particularly high temperatures in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
The heat has also reduced water levels on major rivers, hindering shipping, which prompted several \u200cGerman states to temporarily \u2060suspend some curbs on truck traffic this weekend.<\/p>\n
“The risk of heatwaves and the associated fatalities was underestimated,” Swiss Re CEO Andreas \u2060Berger told Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag, adding: “We need to raise awareness of the dangers arising from this.”<\/p>\n
Berger, who was speaking after Swiss Re reported a 9% \u200bincrease in \u200bnet profit for the first half \u200bof 2026, said it was too \u200cearly to say definitively how the excess mortality would affect the Zurich-based company’s figures.<\/p>\n
The Robert Koch Institute for public health estimated there had been about 11,900 heat-related deaths in Germany this year by late July, mostly due to extreme temperatures in late June.<\/p>\n
Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, as well as \u200cLower Saxony, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saarland loosened trucking curbs \u200bon Sunday to ease transport bottlenecks caused by \u200bwater levels on rivers including \u200bthe Rhine.<\/p>\n
“Low water levels are putting a strain on supply \u200cchains. That’s why we’re taking action \u200band creating additional transport \u200boptions by road at short notice,” said Rhineland-Palatinate’s state secretary for transport, Markus Wolf.<\/p>\n
The looser curbs on truck traffic on Sundays and holidays \u200bwill apply until the \u200cend of August and could stay in place in some states through \u200bSeptember, authorities said.<\/p>\n
(Writing by Dave Graham; Additional reporting by Holger \u200bHansen in Berlin; Editing by Alexander Smith)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ZURICH\/BERLIN, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Authorities failed to grasp the scale of risk to human life posed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[55220,55222,41,17,55221,26995],"class_list":["post-113362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-german-states","tag-rhineland-palatinate","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland","tag-truck-traffic","tag-water-levels"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/117065845710363190","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}