East Coast Still Broiling in Wretched Heat

How hot was it on the East Coast on Tuesday?

In Baltimore, it was so wretchedly hot--101, a record--that polar bears at the city zoo were served a new kind of Popsicle: fruit and peanuts frozen into giant blocks.

In New Castle, Del., Terry Piascik of AAA Ice said customers were clamoring for ice for their Jacuzzis. Piascik was ecstatic. In 13 years, his company has never been this busy.

On the third straight day of torrid temperatures and muggy humidity, there were blackouts, transportation tie-ups and widespread misery across the region.

Late in the evening, with the temperature still 91 degrees, the power went out in the northern tip of Manhattan from the East River to the Hudson River. New York officials estimated about 68,000 people were without electricity.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani hurried to a Consolidated Edison facility in the area, and police were mobilized from other parts of the city and sent to the affected neighborhoods.

A Con Ed spokesman said that after several manhole fires, a series of feeder cables failed, plunging streets, apartment building and traffic lights into darkness.

Giuliani said the volume of calls to New York’s emergency 911 number reached a record high.

The 101-degree temperature in Central Park on Tuesday shattered a previous high for the day of 98, set in 1986. Records fell in Newark (103) and Atlantic City, N.J. (100), and Harrisburg, Pa. (100).

Following a weekend in which fife-and-drum players in several local Fourth of July parades were flattened by temperatures above 100, an extreme heat warning issued by the National Weather Service continued on Tuesday. The advisory extended from Illinois to the East Coast and from southern New England to North Carolina.

Relief--in a manner of speaking--was in sight late Tuesday afternoon as thunder and lightning storms descended on parts of New England and upstate New York. Following the storms, temperatures in the high 80s were predicted for the latter part of the week for much of the Northeast.

At least eight deaths have been attributed to the heat in the East and Midwest.

In Washington, 7,000 young people celebrated as the first official day of work in a summer employment program was postponed. Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci ordered all 650 workers in Providence, R.I., City Hall sent home when a power failure cut electricity to the building. In Delaware, a highway melted.

For those without air-conditioning, the Wal-Mart store in South Philadelphia had a popular alternative. The “Cool Blast” looks like a Thermos, attaches to your belt and has a piece of flexible hose that comes up around your neck and squirts water in your face. Works great, if you don’t get entangled in the gizmo.

Meanwhile, in Boston, electrical power use broke all records on Tuesday as the region tried to air-condition its way through the blast-furnace heat spell.

Utilities across the region reported scattered blackouts. About 55,000 customers of GPU Inc. in New Jersey lost power, and the Long Island Power Authority said outages had affected at least 50,000 customers there.

The heat damaged overhead electrical wires for commuter trains in Connecticut, causing widespread delays. And on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, subways closed during the afternoon because of power dips.

There seemed little respite, even in traditional low-heat zones. On Cape Cod, for example, where New Englanders usually flock to escape sweltering city temperatures, the thermometer on Tuesday hovered in the mid- to high 90s. Popular bistros experienced waits of two hours or more the night before as chefs from home fled their kitchens, too broiled themselves to think of doing any roasting.

To provide some comfort, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino opened 13 “cooling centers” throughout the city. City employees took to the streets Monday and Tuesday to invite senior citizens and others into the air-conditioned shelters.

While Tuesday’s heat stretched north to Portland, Maine, and Concord, N.H., Boston and the southeastern section of Massachusetts were particularly affected by the brutal weather.

“We have our own brand of weather here in the Boston area,” said meteorologist Rob Gilman, head of New England Weather Science. “It’s notorious, and it’s very confounding to visitors.”

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Times researcher Edith Stanley contributed to this story.