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France gets relief from killer heatwave

Grape harvesters load a basket with grapes yesterday in Saint-Etienne-des-Oullieres, southeastern France. The first grapes for Beaujolais wine were harvested weeks earlier than normal because of the unusually hot weather of this summer and the drought of the past months. AFP: PHOTO

Parisians sighed with relief after a small drop in temperatures yesterday which forecasters said marked the beginning of the end of the heatwave that has killed dozens across Europe in recent weeks.

"This is a foretaste of what's expected in the coming days," a spokesman for Meteo France said, predicting a drop to 350C or 360C degrees in peak heat levels in Paris and northern France from above 400C on Tuesday.

"Summer's not over but temperatures should go back closer to more normal levels soon," he said. "What we've had is the worst we've ever seen, as bad as or worse than 1947." That year saw the most intense heatwave on record in France.

Although searing temperatures were expected to continue in southern France and Europe, where wildfires still raged, the forecasters predicted a significant drop in heat levels in northerly parts on Thursday.

Many Parisians got a better sleep as mercury levels wavered and light air currents wafted through the city before dawn yesterday but some 1,500 homes were deprived of light and energy as intense heat damaged underground power supply cables.

A spokeswoman for state-owned Electricite de France (EdF) said some 1,500 homes lost power briefly near the Bastille area of central Paris.

EdF slashed power production earlier this week as some nuclear stations overheated and it also secured emergency waivers from environment rules to allow the nuclear reactors to discharge hotter water into rivers.

The promise of cooler weather held out the prospect of EdF and power suppliers in other countries like Germany seeing an end to the problems they experienced in recent days as people turned up air conditioning, refrigerators and fans.

The head of the Paris public hospital service, Rose-Marie Van Lerberghe, said on RTL radio yesterday that more than 100 people had died in recent days as a direct or indirect result of the intense heat.

"It's like Chicago in 1995," she said, referring to a heatwave that killed hundreds.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin announced that beds would be made available to the public in military hospitals to cope with an influx of patients with heat-related complaints.

The move came after doctors warned that the heatwave had become a serious public health crisis, and criticized the government for reacting too slowly, triggering an intense political debate.

"We've got more than 100 victims," said Patrick Pelloux, the head of France's association of emergency doctors.

Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei, in an interview on TF1 television, refused to confirm Pelloux's figures, but said: "What is clear is that I don't want to speak about deaths from natural causes, because the heat is a triggering factor."

France on Tuesday recorded its highest temperature since the heatwave began, with the mercury rising to 42.60C in the southeastern town of Orange.

The last time such a high temperature was registered in France was in the summer of 1982, when the southeastern town of Luc recorded 42.70C degrees

Forecasters said that northern Europe would likely see a respite Thursday and Friday, although temperatures may well rise again afterwards and southern Europe would continue to swelter.

Portugal has suffered the highest temperatures, recording a mighty 47.30C on August 1 in Amarelejo, on the Spanish border -- the hottest temperature since records began in 1856.

New all-time highs were also recorded in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria and often-gloomy Britain, where bookmakers were forced to pay out hundreds of thousands of pounds after the mercury topped 1000 F Fahrenheit (37.80 C) at the weekend.
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