http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/ap/20030814/ap_on_re_eu/france_heat_wave&e=4&ncid=
Thu, Aug 14, 2003
Heat Wave Kills Up to 3,000 in France
By JAMEY KEATEN, Associated Press Writer
PARIS - France's worst
heat wave on record has killed as many as
3,000 people across the nation, the Health Ministry said Thursday,
as the government faced accusations that it failed to respond
to a
major health crisis.
Deaths accelerated
in the past week, with up to 180 people dying
in one day in Paris due to the abnormally high temperatures that
have smothered France and other parts of Europe, the ministry
said.
The August heat also has devastated livestock and fanned wildfires
that have blackened tens of thousands of acres of territory.
It was the government's
first official death toll estimate.
After days of complaints about the slow government response,
the government on Wednesday launched crisis management measures
usually reserved for epidemics, terror attacks and catastrophes.
"The number that
today reflects a reasonable estimate is between
1,500 and 3,000 deaths," said Health Minister Jean-Francois
Mattei
Thursday afternoon after leaving a Cabinet meeting. "We can
qualify
what is happening to us as a true epidemic," he told France-Inter
radio earlier.
The ministry said in
its statement that the deaths of approximately
3,000 people were "directly or indirectly" linked to
the heat,
many of them elderly. It said the estimate was partly drawn from
studying deaths in 23 Paris regional hospitals from July 25-Aug.
12
and from information provided by General Funeral Services.
According to 2002 figures,
the Paris regional hospitals that were
surveyed could have expected some 39 deaths a day, the ministry
said.
But Tuesday, they recorded nearly 180, it said.
"We note a clear
increase in cases beginning Aug. 7-8, which
we can regard as the start of the epidemic of deaths linked
to the heat," the statement said.
Morgues and funeral
directors have reported skyrocketing demand
for their services since the heat wave took hold. General Funeral
Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled some
3,230 deaths from Aug. 6-12, compared to 2,300 on an average
week in the year - a 37 percent jump.
Many people died while
locked inside apartments, raising concerns
about hygiene and odor. One police officers union in Paris called
on the government to deploy the army to help retrieve bodies.
With many families
gone on vacation, "there are a lot of elderly
people alone in big cities in August," said health ministry
spokeswoman Laurence Danand.
Danand said an exact
figure would be released next week on the
number of heat-related deaths, based on a survey of all private
and public medical institutions, including retirement homes.
Under the crisis measures
enacted Wednesday, hospitals in Paris
mobilized a large number of beds to treat victims and called
back health care workers from their vacations.
Critics said it amounted
to too little, too late. One hospital
official faulted the government for failing to act on warning
signals from doctors in late July and early August.
"We said, 'Watch
out, something's happening. There are a
lot of people arriving' - but no one listened," said Patrick
Pelloux, head of France's emergency physicians' association,
on Europe-1 radio.
When it's all counted,
"we're going to have between 3,000 and
5,000" dead, Pelloux said. "It's a nationwide catastrophe
the
likes of which we've never seen."
Mattei, the health
minister, acknowledged "difficulties"
but said the government "carried out the responses that
were needed" as soon as the first cases of heat-related
death appeared.
"We didn't just
remain inactive," he said.
Paris City Hall said
Wednesday it would ensure that city-run
funeral homes would remain open to bury bodies on Friday,
a holiday in France, and recall more than 30 municipal workers
from vacation.
To protect the elderly,
the city's 13 retirement homes bought
extra fans and atomizers to keep their residents cool in a country
where air conditioning is not widespread.
Record-high temperatures
have been set in numerous cities across
France, and the capital has baked under heat at or exceeding
98 degrees.
In its duration and
in temperatures reached, the heat wave
was France's worst ever, surpassing the previous hottest
summer - 1947, said Patrick Galois, a forecaster for weather
service Meteo France.
"It's historic,
unprecedented since we've had weather stations,"
Galois said
