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Gave diggers stay busy as France copes with deaths

Paris grave-diggers were called back to work on a national holiday Friday after a heat wave left up to 3,000 dead in France. With morgues full, authorities took over the vast storeroom of a farmers' market or kept bodies in refrigerated tents.

Morgues and cemeteries have been overwhelmed in the heat wave, which the health minister called "a true epidemic." A Paris regional funeral official said families would likely have to wait 10-15 days to have their loved ones buried.

"We're explaining the situation to families," said Hugues Fauconnet of General Funeral Services, the country's largest undertaker. "Our most important mission is to preserve the dignity of the deceased."

Funeral officials claimed the 4,000m2 refrigerated storage area of the Paris area's wholesale market in the suburb of Rungis. They plan to place bodies on army cots.

Complicating matters for burials: Many priests were away on summer vacation in predominantly Roman Catholic France, which all but shuts down during August.

Throughout Europe, temperatures settled back to normal on Friday at the close of the punishing two-week heat wave. The mercury had hovered around the mid-30?C, fanning forest fires and devastating livestock and crops.

Thunderstorms cooled Switzerland on Friday, while in the Netherlands, temperatures were down to 20?C. Germany also had relief from the heat, though officials were still on watch for fires.

Though temperatures dropped, France's political climate still simmered with accusations the government didn't do enough to prevent the crisis.

Despite warnings from emergency room doctors, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin waited until Wednesday to order Paris hospitals to prepare more beds and call health-care workers back from vacation.

If the government had acted sooner, "many lives could have been saved," Patrick Pelloux, head of the association for French emergency hospital physicians, told Le Parisien newspaper.

Former Health Minister Claude Evin, a Socialist, also accused the center-right government for waiting too long.

"When it comes to public health, the speed of the reaction is essential," Evin told Le Monde. Many victims were elderly and died of dehydration or heat stroke.

French officials provided no official figures on the number of deaths until Thursday, when they produced the staggering figure of 3,000. Later, Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei said the most reasonable estimate was between 1,500 and 3,000. A final, figure is to be released next week.
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