France’s punishing early-summer heat took a deadly toll: health authorities say the country registered 5,764 more deaths than expected during last month’s record-breaking heatwave, calling the excess mortality among people aged 15 and older “unprecedented”.
Officials said it marked France’s highest heatwave-related excess mortality since the catastrophic 2003 episode, when around 15,000 people died.
France has now been hit by three heatwaves since May, the latest in a run of increasingly frequent bouts of extreme heat that scientists have linked to made-made climate change.
The surge in temperatures strained daily life in a country where many homes, schools and hospitals are not built for prolonged heat and often lack air conditioning.
The same conditions have also parched riverbeds and fuelled wildfires, including one that last week tore through a tenth of the vast UNESCO-listed forest of Fontainebleau outside Paris.
Sante Public France said the additional deaths recorded between 17 June and 2 July were attributed to “all causes”, with none yet clearly tied directly to the heat. Final figures are expected to be published in the autumn.
For comparison, France reported 5,722 excess fatalities linked to high temperatures between June and mid-September last year.
Older people accounted for the bulk of last month’s excess deaths: about two-thirds were aged 75 or over, while less than a fifth were 45 to 64.
Half of the additional deaths occurred over just three days, from 25 to 27 June.
Paris deaths spike
France endured its hottest June since records began in 1947, with the heatwave pushing temperatures above 40C in many areas.
Across the country, average temperatures on 24 June and 25 June were the highest ever recorded in France when comparing all months combined.
In the Paris region, deaths jumped 80%, according to Sante Public France, after the agency said last week that fatalities had doubled during the week of 22-28 June.
That same final week of June also brought tragic incidents involving young children: four died across France after becoming trapped in blisteringly hot cars.
Authorities said those cases did not appear to affect official death rates for that age category.
An earlier, unusually early heatwave in May was also deadly, with at least 300 more deaths than normal.
Scientists have said human-caused climate change was “unequivocally” responsible for the intensity of the heatwave that struck Europe in late June.
And the trend has accelerated in recent years: of the 53 heatwaves recorded nationwide since 1947 up to late June, half have occurred since 2010, according to national met office Meteo-France.
