"I’m adapting, since the power cuts out every two hours, I avoid stocking up on food so it doesn’t spoil," vendor Mohamed Ali told RFI's reporter in the city of El Fahs, North of Tunisia. "We’ve been in this situation for three weeks, and no one understands what’s going on because the outages happen constantly."
For days, the STEG state electricity and gas company has been issuing daily heat alerts in Tunisia listing neighbourhoods where it would cut electricity to reduce pressure on the national grid.
STEG Chief Executive Faycel Trifa said heavy air conditioner use had pushed the electricity network to its limit.
Another company official told state television that electricity demand may have reached a record six gigawatts on Tuesday, after hitting 5.6 gigawatts only days earlier.
Power and water cuts have affected parts of Tunisia in previous summers, but this year's outages have spread across much of the country. Some residents say their electricity had gone off for up to six hours at a time, others said even longer.
"It feels like God has opened the gates of hell," said an employee at a pastry shop in Tunis, where cakes sat in the dark and the refrigerators had stopped running.
The outages have become one of the country's main talking points, both online and in the streets. Some now say they avoid elevators for fear of being trapped inside.
Human-driven climate change
President Kais Saied said those responsible for the failures should be held accountable. He has also ordered immediate measures to address water and electricity outages, which he described as "abnormal phenomena."
The Young Doctors' Association has recorded nearly 150 heatwave-related deaths.
Tunisian business groups fear the outages are hurting the economy.
Employers' organisation CONECT said the lack of precise schedules for planned cuts made it difficult for companies to prepare for production.
An employee at a factory in a Tunis suburb who requested anonymity said work had almost stopped for two days because of the repeated outages.
One butcher raised concerns over the potential damage to his equipment by the cuts as well as a drop in voltage: "They're going to ruin my refrigerator."
Scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the length, intensity and frequency of heatwaves.
Tunisia also needed to speed up the development of renewable energy. The country has vast solar potential and favourable conditions for wind power, but the biggest challenge would be storing electricity.
That would require significant public investment, she added, arguing that Tunisia needs "a change of paradigm" diversifying its energy resources.
Drought, extreme warmth and fires
Meanwhile, fires broke out in neighbouring Algeria on Tuesday in Seraidi, a town west of the city of Annaba surrounded by forests.
More than 100 people were hospitalised this week after the wildfires reached nearly 150 homes in a small town in the north-eastern region of the country, according to the interior ministry.
Interior Minister Said Sayoud told reporters at a local hospital that most of the hospitalised people were in a "stable and reassuring" condition, adding that more than 150 homes had been affected by the fires.
Civil protection crews "were still battling the blazes" most of the week, the minister added.
Algeria has been grappling with hundreds of wildfires for days, with at least six people dead in several provinces, according to the interior ministry.
Every summer, northern Algeria is struck by forest fires, a phenomenon exacerbated by drought and climate change.
Dozens of people have been killed in recent years and thousands of hectares of forest or farmland destroyed, along with numerous homes.
A court in Algiers said Wednesday that four people had been placed in pre-trial detention for "setting fires within forest areas" around northeastern Algeria's Constantine province.
(with AFP)
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