Consternated, France counts its heat victims. And there are more and more. Right-wingers and Greens blame each other.
June 30, 2026, 04:47June 30, 2026, 04:47
A Paris pharmacy gives the temperature.Image: Apaydin Alain / Imago
He must have loved his wife very much. Last week, a 90-year-old man ignored his son’s warning and visited the cemetery in Pierre-en-Bresse (Burgundy) in the scorching heat of almost 40 degrees. His body was later found near the sunny grave of his late wife.
The widower is one of many who died in France during and because of the week-long “canicule” (heat wave). The health authority Santé publique France published an initial assessment of the extreme heat on Sunday – around a thousand deaths.
It is often difficult to say in which cases these are “heat victims”, especially in older people, as there are various factors that contribute to the heat. Santé publique France calculates the number according to the principle of “excess mortality”: the daily values are deducted from the skyrocketing total number of deaths. The result is not absolutely precise, but it does provide a relatively accurate picture of the heat victims over the years.
The thousand deaths are fewer than the 15,000 heat deaths in the summer of 2003, which remain traumatic memories in France to this day. However, as Santé Publique France itself notes, they only represent a “provisional” and probably still “underestimated” balance sheet. There is only fragmentary information about deaths at home, i.e. outside of hospitals or retirement homes. This also applies to the attic apartments in Paris, where many old single people died unnoticed in 2003.
Fire department ice baths
Optimists say awareness of isolated seniors has increased since then. The heat wave of 2003 also struck at the beginning of August, when most of the neighbors were on vacation. Now the elderly might have to feel less abandoned in their apartment buildings. The emergency fire department in Paris has also been using an efficient cooling system with ice baths since the 2024 Olympic Games, which has proven itself.
However, funeral directors report that the morgues in Paris are “fully booked”. This is considered a bad sign. The manager of one of these cold rooms, Zouhaier Hertelli, told the newspaper “La Parisien” that he had to reject 150 requests from funeral homes over the weekend alone; almost all of them affected older heat victims.
In 2003, the authorities even had to open the cold storage halls of the Rungis fresh market in Paris for the temporary storage of heat deaths. It’s not that far yet. However, an exact balance of heat deaths will not be possible for a week or two at the earliest.
The government had saved its climate fund
The number of a thousand heat deaths is high enough to spark a heated political debate. Green party leader Marine Tondelier accuses the government of failing: it did not anticipate the heat wave; Worse still, it cut the “fonds vert” (green fund) intended for climate containment from 2.5 billion euros this year to 837 million. “The government bears a heavy responsibility,” criticized left-wing MP Aurélie Trouvé. “Many deaths could have been avoided.”
The moderate and national right, however, accuse the Greens of fighting against air conditioning even in hospitals. There are ideological reasons for this, as the electricity for cooling in France comes from nuclear power plants.
Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has now hastily ordered 30,000 air conditioning systems for public hospitals, as the television station BFM reports. On Monday, President Emmanuel Macron’s confidant called another emergency meeting to forestall the next heat wave. As French meteorologists fear, it could hit France as early as next week and then move eastward, as it has in recent days. (schweiztoday.ch)