Heat wave ripples hit France
Faced with the political fall-out from the country's recent heat wave, pressure grew on the French government this week, writes David Tresilian from Paris
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Workers dig two fresh graves at the Villetaneuse cemetery outside Paris. An estimated 3,000 people have died in France of heat-related causes since abnormally high temperatures swept the country about two weeks ago
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The government of French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was on the defensive last week, faced with allegations that it had failed to react adequately to the crisis provoked by the recent heat wave, which is believed to have left some 3,000 dead.
Ironically, it was as temperatures began to descend last Friday from the 40 C highs that had reigned across much of France over the last fortnight that the government began a public-relations campaign designed to deflect allegations from health workers that it had abandoned the vulnerable to the effects of the heat and from the environmental lobby that the country's nuclear power stations were now operating under dangerous conditions.
Announcing a Plan blanc, or "white plan", to deal with the health crisis last weekend that would make more hospital beds available and allow the recall of essential staff now taking their summer holidays, the Minister of Health Jean-François Mattei said that the number of deaths among older and vulnerable people as a result of the prolonged period of heat had now reached "epidemic levels" and were part of a "human drama" that had seen hospitals overwhelmed by the demand for beds.
Earlier, Patrick Pelloux, president of an association of hospital doctors, had told the tabloid paper Le Parisien that hospitals in the Paris region were faced with "carnage" as a result of older people being unable to survive the heat. The situation was being managed "in an incredibly scandalous fashion", he said, and the health authorities were "doing absolutely nothing" in response to the situation.
The "white plan" is ordinarily only invoked to deal with the health effects of epidemics, attack, or nuclear, chemical or biological catastrophes. According to figures released last Friday, 800 people had needed to be hospitalised in the Paris region between 8 and 12 August suffering from the effects of the heat, and 213 deaths had been registered in the Val-de-Marne area outside Paris in the same period, where the average figure is around a dozen a week.
Funeral directors in Paris had registered 3, 230 deaths in Paris from 4 to 10 August, 867 above the average. In response, the government last Friday announced the requisition of a refrigeration facility outside Paris ordinarily used for food storage but now turned into a gigantic emergency morgue.
During the heat wave, which ended last Friday when temperatures descended back to normal, temperatures across France reached new highs, with historic figures recorded in towns such as Reims (38.7 C), Troyes (39.5 C) and Bordeaux (40.2 C). In Paris, temperatures reached 39 C, the highest since 1947. In the south of France, temperatures in excess of 40 C were recorded.
Since June, France, like elsewhere in Europe, has suffered from three successive waves of heat, each bringing temperatures very near or above the highest ever recorded. In late June, temperature records were broken in many French cities, and high temperatures again followed in mid July. The latest heat wave began in early August.
Not only France's health care system has been stretched as a result of the extreme temperatures. Concerns were also being expressed last week at the effects of the prolonged period of heat on the country's nuclear power stations and on the environment more generally.
Following the announcement earlier this month that the electricity authorities, Electricité de France (EDF), had taken the unprecedented step of spraying the concrete exterior of the Fessenheim nuclear power station on the German border with water in an attempt to cool the space within, which had exceeded 48 C, concerns continued to grow over the safety of the country's nuclear power stations. The Fessenheim reactor was subsequently shut down.
Last week the French government announced that it had relaxed regulations governing the temperature of the cooling water that nuclear power stations were allowed to discharge into the country's rivers in an attempt to keep the facilities operating during the prolonged period of heat.
Ordinarily, the temperature of such discharge is tightly controlled, since warming the rivers can have catastrophic consequences for fish and for local eco-systems. However, with river water reaching dangerously low levels and higher temperatures as a result of the ambient heat, nuclear power station cooling-water discharges have also increased in temperature, bringing river temperatures in some cases up to 30 C.
Fish species began to die when the river water reaches 29 C. Many French nuclear power stations have been operating at reduced capacity in recent weeks, due to a rise in the temperature of the cooling water and to reduced river flow. The government's decision to allow EDF to ignore environmental regulations should allow these power stations to increase capacity and to prevent the possibility of power cuts, already threatened last week if the heat continued.
Some 75 per cent of France's electricity is generated from nuclear power stations, and, unlike in neighbouring Germany, where a strong Green Party has for years demanded that nuclear power be abandoned in favour of safer forms of energy, the French public has always seemed indifferent to the policy of successive French governments of building ever more nuclear power stations.
In addition to the problems caused to the country's electricity generating industry as a result of the recent heat wave, pollution levels in French cities have also reached historic highs, with ozone levels above the recommended maximums in cities across France. City authorities in many areas issued regulations governing the use of private cars, or declaring public transport to be free, in efforts to discourage people from using their cars and adding to the pollution.
With calls from the political opposition for the resignation of the minister of health, the secretary of the opposition Socialist Party, François Hollande, demanding a parliamentary enquiry into the government's handling of the crisis, voices have been raised in the French press as to why the country apparently suffered so much from a period of unusual heat.
"Taking a siesta is the traditional way to conserve energy in hot climates, but can it also be a method of government," asked the French newspaper Le Monde in its editorial last Wednesday.
"Certainly ... the government is not in a position to 'change how things are' or to make it rain. But to limit its reaction, which has in any case been late after two weeks of the crisis, to common-sense solutions and calls for public-spiritedness is insufficient. Call the health information line, says the minister of health; don't forget to turn off the lights, says his colleague at environment; the state will help you, promises the minister of agriculture."
"However, in the meantime the situation is serious," the newspaper said. "Hospitals are collapsing under the pressure of emergency admissions and the deaths of people at risk; farmers are suffering; nuclear power stations are being given permission to discharge hot water into rivers. Faced with a phenomenon that could well happen again and that touches on a vital commodity, water, more could have been expected from the team in power."
