Experts See No Relief From Heat in East : Weather: Forecasters say high temperatures will linger for days. At least seven deaths are blamed on sweltering conditions.

Unremitting heat continued to smother states from Maine to Florida on Friday, and forecasters said it would take several days for the East to shake the Big Bake.

At least seven deaths were blamed on the hot weather.

“We don’t see the pattern really changing a whole lot at least through the next five days,” said Bruce Sullivan of the National Weather Service on Friday.

“We’ve had a high pressure ridge, or what a lot of people call a ‘Bermuda high’ dominating the eastern half of the United States,” Sullivan said. “It flattens a little bit with time, but it doesn’t really go away.”

New York City’s Central Park hit a scalding 101 degrees, and temperatures at Newark International Airport in New Jersey climbed into triple digits for the third day in a row. The Jersey shore provided little relief--the Atlantic City airport hit a record 100 degrees.

The mercury hit 91 degrees in normally pleasant Portland, Me., making it the third consecutive day of 90-degree or higher temperatures. Atlanta was sweltering at 94.

Residents of Bluefield, W. Va., knew the heat wave reached them when they saw lemonade being served on the street. The area Chamber of Commerce, which bills the town of 12,800 people as “nature’s air-conditioned city” because of its breezes, serves lemonade the day after the thermometer hits 90 degrees.

Heat contributed to the deaths of five people in Philadelphia this week as authorities urged residents to take warnings about the sweltering weather seriously. All of the victims were over 60.

Jeff Moran, a spokesman for the city Health Department, said: “In most of these cases heat was a factor combined with an underlying heart disease.”

The heat wave also was blamed for the death of a 40-year-old Brooklawn, N.J., man, who died Wednesday from abnormally high body temperatures after working outside all day picking up litter. Police in Keene, N.H., said the heat contributed to the death of an elderly woman found in her swimming pool.

In Biddeford, Me., Southern Maine Medical Center continued to curtail some services because of an air-conditioning failure. Elective surgery was canceled and parts of the hospital’s emergency room facilities were closed. A backup air-conditioning system was being used, and the hospital bought 100 fans for patients’ rooms and office areas.

Engineers at electric companies from Georgia to Maine crossed their fingers and prayed as the sixth day of record-breaking heat brought enormous demands for power from millions of air conditioners.

Wires burned, fuses exploded and generators tripped out in dozens of locations, but overall the grid held under the strain.

“We’re doing OK, but six or seven days into a heat wave does take its toll on electrical equipment,” said Nancy Moses, spokeswoman for Potomoc Electric Power Co., which serves all of Washington and its suburbs.

William Sheperdson, spokesman for the New England Power Pool, said an emergency was declared at 1 p.m. Thursday when a generating plant on Cape Cod shut down and Hydro Quebec was forced to cut its 1,200-megawatt electrical feed to the region.

New York City pushed demand near capacity.