PARIS, Aug. 14 -- A blistering heat wave across Europe has caused as many as 3,000 deaths in France, the government said today, and overburdened funeral homes and morgues are struggling to deal with an unusually high number of bodies.
Critics posed new questions for the government about its handling of the crisis, and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin rushed back to Paris from his Alpine vacation to deal with what the Health Ministry termed an epidemic of heat-related deaths.
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More News from France
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Abnormally high temperatures this month have baked France and other parts of Europe, fanning forest fires and devastating livestock. Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei, speaking to reporters after an emergency meeting with Raffarin, said the figure "reflects a reasonable estimate" of between 1,500 and 3,000 dead.
The estimate was lower than an earlier ministry statement that put the number of dead at 3,000 since Aug. 7, which many people had found surprisingly high. Other countries in Europe that have suffered through the heat wave have reported far fewer deaths. Spain, for example, has recorded 42.
It was the government's first official death toll estimate, though hospital officials in Paris said this week that more than 100 people had died in the capital alone.
"It's a nationwide catastrophe the likes of which we've never seen," Patrick Pelloux, head of the association for French emergency hospital physicians, told Europe 1 radio today. He has repeatedly criticized the government for reacting slowly.
Mattei said the government had responded when the first cases of heat-related death appeared, telling France Inter radio: "We didn't just remain inactive."
Morgues and funeral homes, meanwhile, were overrun with bodies. Some hospitals requisitioned kitchen refrigerators to hold the dead, while others put up tents to keep corpses before burial, Pelloux said. A morgue in Longjumeau, a suburb south of Paris, rented an air-conditioned tent to house corpses.
General Funeral Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled 3,230 deaths from Aug. 6-12, compared to 2,300 in an average week.
Family members of victims lashed out at the government. "It's scandalous. The government has done nothing," said Martine Flou, whose 70-year-old mother's body had to be brought to a morgue in Paris from their home 50 miles away because there was no space to be found.
Germany and Italy have not issued figures on heat-related deaths, saying such numbers were difficult to determine because heat may be just one factor.
The French Health Ministry said its estimate was partly drawn from tracking deaths in 23 Paris regional hospitals from July 25 to Aug. 12, and from information provided by General Funeral Services. According to 2002 figures, Paris regional hospitals surveyed could have expected about 39 deaths a day, the ministry said. But on Tuesday, they recorded nearly 180 deaths.
If the preliminary French figures hold up, the heat-related death toll would be among the highest in recent years, officials at the World Health Organization in Geneva said.
"I was surprised that the number was so large," said WHO climate change expert Carlos Corvalan, adding that the figure "any way you cut it, is too many deaths from a heat wave."
