The death toll in a week-long eastern Canadian heat wave has reached 54, officials said on Friday.

Most of the victims linked to the "overwhelming heat" were in the Montreal area, which recorded 28 fatalities, metropolitan health authorities told AFP in an email.

The other victims were reported in the southwest of the French-Canadian province, the Quebec health ministry said.

On Thursday, Environment Canada had forecast a maximum temperature of 35 C (95 F) but said the heat index would make it feel like 45 C.

The mercury has since June 29 regularly topped 30 C, accompanied by stifling humidity levels, but temperatures should drop back to seasonal averages from Saturday.

"Looking at the weather forecast, we are waiting for a return to normal in the coming hours," said Health Ministry spokeswoman Noemie Vanheuverzwijn.

Most of the victims in Montreal were men in their 50s or older, and living in vulnerable conditions without air conditioning, regional public health director Mylene Drouin has said.

Neighboring Ontario has also been coping with high temperatures but no deaths have been reported there.

In 2010, around 100 people in the Montreal area died when extreme heat stifled the area.

One dead as western US heat wave stunts firefighting efforts
Los Angeles (AFP) July 7, 2018 - The western US was in the midst of a record heat wave Friday, with one dead in California as massive fires forced hundreds to evacuate.

"Large fire activity is spread across the country from Florida to Alaska," the National Interagency Fire Center announced, as temperatures spiked above 104 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius) in some places.

"Currently 60 large fires have burned more than 823,000 acres in 13 states," the center added. Twenty fires burned in Alaska, with seven others in New Mexico, four in California, eight in Colorado and others in Nevada, Arizona, and elsewhere in the southern US.

California's fire agency, Cal Fire, said on Twitter that one person had died as a result of the "Klamathon" fire in Siskiyou County, near the border with Oregon.

Mandatory evacuations were in place, including in the Napa Valley wine region and in southern California near San Diego, where state Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency Friday night due to the "West Fire."

That fire has already destroyed homes and forced road closures, the governor's statement said.

Authorities' efforts to tackle the fires have been complicated by record-breaking hot weather, with temperatures reaching 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Palm Springs -- two hours east of Los Angeles -- and 111 degrees Fahrenheit in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Death toll from Canada heat wave rises to 33
Montreal (AFP) July 5, 2018
A heat wave in Quebec has killed 33 people in the past week as high summer temperatures scorched eastern Canada, officials said Thursday. Eighteen of the dead were reported in the provincial capital Montreal, according to regional public health director Mylene Drouin. She added that the majority of the victims in the city were men aged between 53 and 85 living in vulnerable conditions and without access to air conditioning. The rest of the deaths occurred in other parts of the French-speaki ... read more