Much of France is preparing to live on Wednesday a last day of heat wave after having been suffocated the day before under temperatures up to 41.4 ° C, an early heat wave which also affected millions of Europeans. There remain in red vigilance dawn, the Yonne, the Loiret and the Cher, at this stage until 10:00 p.m., said Météo-France in its last Bulletin of the early morning. The departments of Ile-de-France, Vienne, Indre, Indre-et-Loire and Loir-et-Cher were demoted to orange.
If the maximums will only be 25 ° C along the Atlantic facade, the thermometer will still reach up to 39 ° C in other regions, auguent of an additional complicated day for their inhabitants, knocked out by heat. Near Orleans, Salem Sardji, who came from the Paris region with his children, braved thousands of other people on Tuesday swimming to cool off in a Loire arm. “There are risks but there, we have no choice”, Considered this father who came to a beach in the water planted on Charlemagne Island, while the thermometer displayed 38 ° C at the end of the afternoon.
12 colleges and a high school closed
In the activity room of the Geriatric Hospital Pierre Garraud in Lyon, where a reinforced protocol is applied during a heat wave, the nurses took care to pass the fogger the faces of the seniors. On Tuesday, 2,200 poorly equipped schools, 12 colleges and a high school closed – around 3% of schools – revealing the unhappiness of the school buildings to climatic issues. The nights brought little respite: Météo-France provided temperatures still between 20 and 23 ° C at the fresses of the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. In Paris, it was 25 ° C around 05:00 on Wednesday.
“Due to global warming caused by humans, extreme heat becomes more frequent and more intense”recalled Clare Nullis, spokesperson for the World Meteorological Organization (OMM), seeing it as a phenomenon with which “We have to learn to live”.
“Silent killers” heat
The rest of Europe, especially from the South, also suffered from these strong heat, described as “silent killer” by the UN, with alerts to the population of Portugal to Croatia and Greece, as well as in Germany, in Austria and Switzerland. Paris, known for its urban density and its lack of green spaces, had been placed on a red alert on Tuesday for the first time in five years, with a thermometer bordering on 38 ° C, the top of the Eiffel Tower Closed, parks maintained open at night and the polluting cars prohibited from traffic.
This “Differentiated circulation” was to be lifted on Wednesday at 6 am, said the prefecture of the police, the forecasts reporting “a persistence of the pollution episode (…) with a decrease in concentrations of ozone pollutants”. The reduction of 20 km/h of the maximum speeds authorized throughout the perimeter of the Grand-Paris must remain in force all day. “With the heat wave, we will surely be more than 30%, plus 40% calls compared to normal”has estimated at the AFP Frederick Adnet, chief service chief 75 AP-HP.
Holds can cause dehydration, muscle cramps, headache or nausea, the most serious risk being heat stroke, which can lead to death, especially in fragile people.
The health impact will be long to measure
To protect the older ones, initiatives are taken everywhere in Europe, with for example free guided tours of air -conditioned museums in Venice or free swimming pools in Rome. In Spain, the government has activated a protocol to strengthen the protection of vulnerable women during the summer, stressing that the increase in temperatures had an impact on gender violence. In the province of Léida in Catalonia, in the northeast of the country, firefighters also announced Tuesday the discovery of two bodies after a fire.
This hot episode “is unusual because it is extreme, very early in the summer season and that climate change has certainly aggravated it”noted to AFP Samantha Burgess, climatologist for the European Observatory Copernicus. According to a publication by Allianz Trade on Tuesday, the European economy could lose 0.5 growth point in 2025 due to recent heat waves.
The health impact will be longer to measure. In France, according to the Ministry of Health, a first estimate of mortality during the period will be known about two weeks after the end of the heat wave, but it is only in the fall that detailed data based on the exploitation of medical data will be available.
