It is summer and it is hot.

HEATWAVE BLAMED FOR 20 DEATHS IN FRANCE

PARIS July 21, 2006 (Scotsman/Reuters) - A heatwave in France has probably killed 20 people this week, including a 15-month old baby, the Health Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

A ministry official said the baby died in Paris where temperatures hit 37 Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) earlier this week, but provided no further details. Of the other victims, 10 were aged 80 or over, four collapsed at their workplace, two died while playing sport, two were homeless and one was an obese youth "in poor physical condition".

STUDENTS, RETIRED DOCTORS
HELP WITH FRENCH HEATWAVE

PARIS July 24, 2006 (AFP) - French Health Minister Xavier Bertrand on Monday appealed to medical students and retired doctors to help reinforce emergency health services during the heatwave underway in the country.

Bertrand said that medical services were being stretched by demand from victims of the heatwave, which has already killed 23 people and is entering its second week.

New York City, the editorial home of Pave, last week was hit by brownouts, blackouts, and temperatures in the 90s.* Our weather and the above stories have put us in mind of the summer of 2003. August of that year a record heatwave scorched most of Europe, killing some 35,000 people. In France the vaunted networks of socialized healthcare, welfare, and casework -- thought by the French to be the envy of the world -- failed. Utterly.

In a span of less than two weeks (August 2-14) France recorded 14,802** largely preventable heat-related deaths of mostly elderly French, some 42% of the European total. A final indignity, many of the corpses remained unclaimed and piled high in refrigerated trailers and meat lockers while families finished up their summer holidays.

The amazing thing -- almost no one in the French government was to blame.

CHIRAC FAULTS PUBLIC IN HEAT DEATHS

PARIS August 22, 2003 (Boston Globe/AP) - Chirac, under fire from opposition politicians and newspapers for not speaking out earlier, promised that "everything will be done" to correct failings in the health system that was overwhelmed by victims of the heat. But his government said ministers would not resign.

Chirac was vacationing in Canada during the heat wave and did not speak about the crisis until yesterday, although aides said he was following the situation. Some critics pointed out that unlike former prime minister Lionel Jospin, who broke off a vacation to Egypt when France suffered storms in 1999, Chirac did not return home.

"What wounded the French was the feeling that their leaders were not present on a moral, human, and emotional level," Socialist Party legislator Jack Lang, a former education minister, told the daily newspaper Le Parisien.

"Chirac, a long surprising silence," conservative-leaning Le Figaro said.

In France, morgues and funeral homes overflowed with bodies, hospitals struggled, and painful questions are being asked about attitudes toward the elderly.

HEALTH MINISTER DUCKS HEAT DEATHS BLAME

PARIS November 25, 2003 (AFP) - Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei*** on Tuesday defended his actions during an August heatwave that killed nearly 15,000 people in France by blaming the disaster on a multiplication of errors rather than any individuals under his authority. The hot weather was "a natural catastrophe deepened by a structural crisis," he told a parliamentary commission of inquiry.

"When so many errors of evaluation occur, it shouldn't be individuals who are blamed but systems," he said.

Mattei added that he personally "did not have the feeling of having made a mistake" during the disaster.

The parliamentary panel was investigating why Mattei and other ministers - all of whom were taking their summer vacations [including M. Mattei] when the two-week heatwave struck - appeared to have managed a tardy and insufficient response, even as it became clear that thousands of mostly elderly French people were dying. After initially minimising the number of dead, Mattei and his subordinates eventually confirmed figures from hospitals and undertakers that showed the country had suffered one of its worst natural disasters in modern history.

Authorities belatedly provided refrigerated trucks to cope with the overflow from morgues, and a national emergency plan which boosted hospital facilities and staffing was only declared at the end of the heatwave.

Up to now, only one official - Lucien Abenheim, then the country's surgeon general - has resigned over the disaster. Mattei, though severely criticised, has kept his job.

[All emphases added.]

* Topping out at 95° Fahrenheit = 35° C. The NYC average July temperature is 76.8°, the average high 85.2°, and the record high 106° (1936).

*** M. Mattei never resigned over the government's heatwave bungling. However, to no one's surprise, he did not survive a March 31, 2004 cabinet makeover. He is currently a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, where obstinate self-excusing is highly prized.

[The above footnote is in error. Jean-François Mattéi is not a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry. Pave has mistaken Dr. Mattéi, the former health minister during the French heat deaths crisis of 2003 for Jean-Baptiste Mattéi, a spokesperson for the foreign ministry. Pave apologizes for the error.]

PFFT (What is this?): Failure in the socialist paradise 5 | Rayonnement français 0