Parts of India are being seared under a heatwave with maximum temperatures ranging from 40 degrees celsius to 46 degrees celsius in many areas. Amid the intense heat, a TV anchor recently fainted while reading heatwave updates live on air as her blood pressure suddenly fell. Lopamudra Sinha, an anchor with the Kolkata branch of Doordarshan, could be heard slurring while reading out the information before she blacked out. “The teleprompter faded away and I blacked out… I collapsed on my chair,” she said in a video shared on her Facebook page.
Ms Sinha said she fainted “due to intense heat and because her blood pressure plummeted suddenly”. The anchor also said that due to some snag in the cooling system, there was extreme heat inside the studio.
She said she was feeling unwell and parched before the morning broadcast on Thursday. “I never keep a water bottle with me. Be it a fifteen-minute or half an hour broadcast, I have never felt the need to sip water during broadcasts in my 21 years of career. But, I felt parched even as 15 minutes were left for the broadcast to end. When the TV was showing visuals and not my face, I pointed to the floor manager and asked for a bottle of water,” she said in Bangla.
Ms Sinha further said that she wasn’t getting a chance to have some water because only general stories were running without any bytes. “Towards the end (of the bulletin), a byte came and I used the opportunity to drink some water.”
After drinking the water, she somehow completed two stories while two others were still pending when she fainted: “While reading a heatwave story, my speech started getting slurred. I tried to complete my presentation. The teleprompter faded away and I blacked out. But luckily, it happened while a 30 to 40 seconds animation was playing out on television. During that time, I collapsed on my chair.”
Drinking enough fluids is one of the most important things you can do to prevent heat illness, even when indoors.
Some men were seen rushing to her aid as she fainted and splashed water on her face.
Ms Sinha also apologised to her channel for the mishap and also thanked the producers for managing the broadcast after she fainted.
“I never even dreamt that something like this would happen,” she said.
She also advised the viewers to take care of themselves amid the scorching heat.
The ongoing heatwave affecting parts of Odisha, Jharkhand, and Gangetic West Bengal is the second heatwave spell this month. The first spell scorched parts of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and Gujarat.
On Saturday, maximum temperatures at some places were recorded seven to eight degrees above normal. Midnapore and Bankura in West Bengal recorded 44.5 degrees Celsius and 44.6 degrees Celsius, respectively.
The threshold for a heatwave is met when the maximum temperature of a weather station reaches at least 40 degrees Celsius in the plains, 37 degrees in the coastal areas, and 30 degrees in the hilly regions, and the departure from normal is at least 4.5 notches. A severe heatwave is declared if the departure from normal temperature exceeds 6.4 notches.
