Published at 05.30
The worst heat has dragged on. But the consequences of it, in the hard-working France, remain when the progress of the heat is counted in human lives and there is no longer room to store the bodies.
– We are facing a huge increase in the number of deaths due to the heat wave, and we really have no room left, says Zouhaeir Hertelli, who runs a mortuary and a funeral home.
In his mortuary there are 32 places, all of which are occupied. Several times a day he is forced to say no, when people call to ask if he has a seat.
– It is a truly catastrophic situation. I get hundreds of calls, says Zouhaeir Hertelli.
Several other funeral homes and mortuaries have the same problem. An undertaker tells Paris Match that his phone almost never stops ringing.
– We will certainly have to use refrigerated containers to store the bodies, another undertaker told the newspaper.
Zouhaeir Hertelli has already asked the authorities for permission to set up refrigerated containers, but is waiting for approval.
– Families suffer, he says and continues:
– We have no solution to offer them.
Thousands of deaths
In 2003, the country was hit by a similar heat wave that claimed an estimated 15,000 lives. This wave of heat has hit harder. For about ten days it held France in an iron grip and heat records were broken several times.
The French equivalent of the public health authority, Santé publique France, states in a press release that last week over 1,200 deaths were registered on Wednesday. For Thursday and Friday, it had increased to 1,400 deaths per day. And for comparison, the figure was between 900 and 1,000 per day during the last heat wave, in April and May. But the figure is expected to rise for days last week, due to backlogs in registration.
“Could be worse”
Undertaker Véronique Bertrand says she fears lessons from previous heat waves have been forgotten. In 2003, it was mainly elderly people living alone who died when the heat ravaged. Véronique Bertrand believes that it made people think about their neighbors and those who live alone and looked at them from time to time.
– Most of the deaths that we now deal with concern people who lived alone, isolated, she says.
– Considering the circumstances surrounding how they were found, it is not possible to draw any other conclusion than that the deaths were caused by the heat.
– Over the years, we may have forgotten that it can happen again, and that the situation could even get worse, says Véronique Bertrand.
