French mortuaries remain overwhelmed as bodies continue to accumulate following a devastating 44C heatwave that gripped the nation. Funeral directors across Paris and throughout the country have been inundated since the record-breaking temperatures struck, with telephones ringing incessantly.
With all 32 places in his cold room taken, Zouhaeir Hertelli reluctantly has to gently say 'Non' repeatedly. 'We're facing a really catastrophic situation. I'm getting hundreds of calls,' he said.
Record Temperatures and Rising Death Toll
While the historic heatwave has now moved eastward across Europe, France has begun calculating the devastating human toll. Public Health France reported approximately 1,200 fatalities on the day the country recorded its hottest-ever temperature, surpassing a benchmark set just 24 hours earlier. Mortality figures climbed to over 1,400 on Thursday and remained at 1,400 on Friday, according to officials. For context, the pre-heatwave daily death rate throughout April and May typically ranged between 900 and 1,000.
The agency warned that its estimate of at least 1,000 extra fatalities during those three scorching days alone is anticipated to rise as further death certificates arrive for those who died at home and in elderly care facilities, where the majority of deaths remain unrecorded electronically, according to the Associated Press.
Elderly and Isolated Hardest Hit
It revealed that 85 per cent of the deaths registered thus far during the three-day period examined involved individuals aged 65 and over, and that there was a marked surge in home deaths — rising by roughly 40 per cent — especially across the Paris region. Hertelli and fellow funeral industry professionals reported that Paris mortuaries rapidly exhausted their storage capacity.
City Hall confirmed two temporary storage facilities, each accommodating 20 bodies, were set up for municipal mortuaries, while city hospitals provided a further 50 additional spaces. Veronique Bertrand, a Paris funeral director, expressed concern that vital lessons have been overlooked.
'Most of the deaths that we are dealing with at the moment were people who were living alone at home, isolated. Given the circumstances in which they were found, there can be no other conclusion than that these were deaths caused by the heat,' Bertrand said.
Call for Renewed Solidarity
'I think people absolutely need to wake up, that solidarity needs to come back, that what happened in 2003 led to a movement in that direction, with people thinking about their neighbours, of those around them who live alone and perhaps checking from time to time that they're drinking water and are being looked after,' she said. 'With the passing years, we've perhaps forgotten that it could happen again and that things would even perhaps be worse.'
Hertelli added: 'We're dealing with an enormous spike of deaths because of the heat wave and we're really full, full, full.' The statistical and public health process of quantifying heat-related fatalities could require weeks, potentially months, but the damage inflicted by the relentless extreme conditions was already horrific in France, the initial country affected from mid-June onwards, with elderly individuals dying at home particularly badly hit.
