Hajj Pilgrimage Death Toll (2024) … this time due to heat
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There are always death at the Hajj pilgrimage, year after year, for many years, but mostly due to stampede.
This year (2024), the number spiked to over 900, and the Saudi authority says the deaths are mostly due to the soaring heat (over 125 Fahrenheit in Mecca). -
125 degrees. That's some wicked heat. TBH, I'm surprised that fewer than a thousand have died with nearly two million people doing the pilgrimage.
We've been in the 90s for four days straight with high-ish dew points. I've been working in the yard for a few hours in the morning. The effects of multiple days of this kind of heat are cumulative and I can tell you that today I hit a wall. And I'm mostly in an air conditioned house, except for the time I worked outside. I absolutely couldn't imagine walking in Mecca-level heat
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I hereby acknowledge that my faith is not strong enough to make me want to do that kind of pilgrimage, ever.
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Wikipedia lists many events in which people died making the pilgrimage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidents_during_the_Hajj
The Hajj is scheduled according to a lunar calendar. It was held in 1985 in the summer heat and there were many deaths.
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Saida Wurie said it was her parents’ lifelong dream to participate in Hajj, the religious pilgrimage that brings Muslims from around the world to Saudi Arabia each year.
They’d spent their “life savings” – $23,000 in total – on an all-inclusive travel package through a tour company registered in the state of Maryland.
“They saved their whole lives for this,” she told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield.
But what was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime turned tragic this week, when Wurie learned that her mother Isatu Tejan Wurie, 65, and father Alieu Dausy Wurie, 71, were among the hundreds of pilgrims who have died during the extreme temperatures that have gripped the Persian Gulf country.
www.cnn.com/2024/06/22/middleeast/american-deaths-hajj-heat-intl-latam/index.html
