The exact story - from the link you provided -
French heat toll tops 11,000
Friday, August 29, 2003 Posted: 9:57 PM EDT (0157 GMT)
Victims were mainly the elderly, who suffered from dehydration and hyperthermia.
• 30 die from heat in Germany
• Deaths rise in Italy heat wave
• Tolls rise as Spain fires continue
• British heat record smashed
• Portugal fire cost tops $1 billion
• Weather from CNN.com
QUICKVOTE
Should the French health minister resign over the government's handling of the heat wave?
Yes
No
VIEW RESULTS
PARIS, France -- France recorded 11,435 extra deaths during a heat wave in the first two weeks of August when temperatures soared over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), according to officials.
Giving preliminary figures, the Health Ministry said Friday that the extra deaths related to the period August 1 to 15 compared to the same period in the previous year.
The ministry said the latest figures were in line with those being compiled by a special government commission set up in response to public anxiety over the death toll in a country whose health service is vaunted as a world beater.
France's leading undertaker had said earlier this month it believed an additional 10,400 people had died in the first three weeks of the heat wave compared to normal.
However, officials at the French funeral directors association put the toll at about 13,000 deaths Friday.
The government was criticized for failing to react fast enough to the crisis, during which hospitals were swamped with people, especially the elderly, suffering from dehydration and hyperthermia.
The country's top health official has resigned but Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei has so far refused calls to step down.
Many bodies remain unclaimed and have been buried in pauper's graves by the authorities as a temporary measure.
France, which normally has temperatures in the upper 20s C (80s F) was hit with temperatures in the upper 30s C (90s to over 100F) during the first three weeks of August.
After the first week of the heat wave, French officials, many of whom had been on vacation, rushed back to work. The death toll soared by 3,000 in that week.
The government did not declare an emergency until a week into a nine-day desert-like weather pattern across France earlier this month.
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/mediacenter/articles/ehudgins_frances-killer-collectivism.asp
The final figures are in. According to Isabelle Dubois-Costes of General Funeral Services in France, the death toll in that country's summer heat wave was some 15,000 -- higher than the recent estimate of 11,400 and much higher than the government's original estimate of 3,000. Most of the victims were elderly. It sometimes took days before overworked emergency workers could remove bodies from overheated dwellings. Those remains often laid for weeks in makeshift morgues as funeral homes failed to keep up with the demand for burials. But this tragedy should not simply be blamed on the hot weather. Rather, much of the responsibility lies with France's ethical and public policy failings.
Many French citizens, with six weeks of government-mandated vacation, take the month of August off, and many leave elderly parents and relatives to fend for themselves in un-air-conditioned apartments and retirement homes. Thus, the wave of deaths seemed in part to result from a failure of individuals to care for their own family members.
http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901030901-477899,00.html
As death toll estimates in France soared from 2,000 on Aug. 14 to as high as 13,400 last week — geometrically higher than anywhere else in sunbaked Europe — the country has been forced to admit that many of its 4.6 million people aged 75 and over do not receive anything like the care of the Sainte-Agnès residents. Often, in fact, they are ignored or forgotten, left to fend for themselves or die alone.
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030817202757.a2ot8gsg.html
Cope also echoed the stance adopted by Raffarin a day earlier, blaming the isolation of the elderly within French society for the high number of deaths.
Visiting a retirement home to emphasise his point, Raffarin on Saturday blamed the crisis on the general neglect of senior citizens in France.
Noting that half of those who succumbed to the intense heat died at home rather than in hospitals, Raffarin said the "loneliness of old people is a deep fault in French society."
http://www.amitai-notes.com/blog/archives/000133.html
The French love leisure more than the old folks?
As recently acknowledged by the French prime minister, about half of the 5,000 or more, mostly elderly French victims of August’s savage heat wave died in their homes, not in hospitals or nursing homes. But where were the families of these elderly folks? Probably where they usually are in August–at the beach. Indeed, August holiday is so important in France that some families postponed the funerals of their deceased loved ones until after the August 15 weekend. One member of a volunteer organization that supports the elderly spoke angrily about the neglect of his countrymen: “[The elderly] are isolated,” Michael Chegaray told the New York Times. “The family leaves, the corner store closes, they often live in the inexpensive top floors, where it is hottest.”