Posted on 08/11/2003 5:31:13 PM PDT by blam
Weakest 'drop like flies' as 50 die in French heatwave
By Philip Delves Broughton in Paris
(Filed: 12/08/2003)
The elderly are dying "like flies" because of the relentless heat, French doctors said yesterday as undertakers warned that their mortuaries were full.
Paris endured its hottest night since records began in 1873 early yesterday with temperatures of at least 76F (24C), following a day of more than 100F (37F). There was not even the slightest breeze to relieve the furnace conditions.
Nuclear plants have been forced to reduce their electicity output by the intense heat and industry chiefs held an emergency meeting with government officials yesterday to discuss how to stave off power cuts.
Patrick Pelloux, the head of the emergency doctors' union, said the heatwave had claimed 50 lives over the past four days in Paris alone.
The state health advisory said it was difficult to link the heat to specific deaths, but admitted that it was clearly a factor in the rising death rate.
"The weakest are dropping like flies," M Pelloux said. "We've never seen people arriving sick in cartloads like this, frequently with fevers.
"I totally reject the fatalistic view of the national health authority that these are deaths from natural causes. So be it, but what are we supposed to do, sit and watch people fade away? That's intolerable, something has to be done."
France's leading funeral director, Michel Minard, said there was no more space in the capital's funeral parlours and that the newly deceased were being held in refrigerated capsules at their homes until space cleared for them to be taken away. Cemeteries have extended their working hours to accommodate the rush of burials.
M Minard said his company dealt with 50 per cent more deaths in the Paris region last week than in the same period last year, 825 compared to 550, and attributed it to the heat.
The threat to power supplies from France's nuclear industry, which provides more than three-quarters of the country's electricity, comes because its reactors are all located on rivers and coastline.
This enables them to drink up water for cooling before returning it to the rivers and sea at a slightly warmer temperature. But with the heatwave driving up outside water temperatures, plants have been forced to cut output because of limits on the temperature of the water they release.
Several reactors, including the Tricastin plant on the Rhone just north of Provence, have been given temporary permission to release even warmer water than usual from their coolers in order to help them through the summer.
Before the meeting about possible power cuts, the industry minister, Nicole Fontaine, said,: "The situation is very serious. There's no more margin for manoeuvre, it's essential that citizens are ready to accept the consequences."
Both the heat and increased demand for electricity have created the situation, and forced EDF, the state electricity supplier, to fall back on coal-fired generators to make up the shortages. France hopes to avoid what has already happened in Italy, where the heatwave has exposed an ill-run electricity industry.
Italy has already experienced extensive power cuts, caused in part by countries such as France restricting the supply of power to their neighbour to provide for their own needs.
The Italian government is now broadcasting television advertisements advising people to turn out lights and use their dish washers and washing machines only at night so as not to overload the system.
The dry weather and heat has turned French agriculture on its head. Grapes will be picked almost a month earlier than usual and the cornfields were harvested weeks ago.
In the Correze, 713 piglets died on Sunday night for lack of ventilation in their sties. In Paris, the trees are shedding their crinkled, brown leaves with autumn barely in view.
The head of the Paris mosque, Dalil Boubakeur, has called on Muslims to pray for rain.
Tell me. Mobile County had the wettest July since records have been kept. (I guess our four year drought is over, lol)
Sounds worse than Iraq. A veritable European quagmire I tell ya'.
I happened to be in Paris in mid-June (it was NOT voluntary, I assure you). It was damn hot then, and not a breeze to be had. My hotel and the major tourist traps were ac'ed, but in between, it was brutal.
Why don't they at least have fans?
Well, the power over there is AC, actually. Generally 50 cycle AC as opposed to 60 that we use here. Their florescent lights flicker a little more than ours. :)
Anyway, the cooling issue is important, as you say - the steam, once its given up most of its thermal and mechanical energy in the turbine needs to be condensed back into water to be pumped back into the boiler (or reactor in the nukes), but the cooling isn't as effective when the cooling water is warmer (and especially when there's less of it). Many coal and nuke generators are de-rated in the hotter months, as are turbine engines which rely on cooler, denser intake air for their combustion. I've seen reductions of 10-15% on some generators. France's system, A/C load notwithstanding, wasn't built with 100 degrees in mind.
Yup. When I was a kid we had a creek on an old dirt that we named 'cold creek'. I was by there a couple weeks ago for the first time in 30+ years and the road is paved and the creek has a county sign, 'Cold Creek', neat. Made my day.
I realize that most French don't have air-conditioning, but are they so stupid as to not know what a fan is? Or perhaps the reporter wants it to sound worse than it is.
Because the "natural" water temperature is higher than the "heated" temperature, perhaps?
I can beleive that - the environazis are that way. People are dying - screw the environmentalists in this case. Plus, they're wrong anyway.
Also read that the outside of the containment vessel was another limiting factor, with a "not to exceed" 50C rating and some plants were in the 49C range and that the plant operators were spraying the outside of the containment vessels with water from fire hoses.
Can't speak with much authority on the outside temperature constraints of the containment building, but the approach of using fire hoses isn't new - I remember more than one occasion where I had the fire department spraying the radiators on an electric transformer to cool it.
I've spend a lot of time in Europe in hot summers and once those masonary building heat up, it's miserable to sleep.
Yes, I recall brick/masonry buildings holding their heat, once they get warmed up. Dang bricks will radiate for days, which is good in the fall, but not in the summer.
That seems to be a problem with urbanization ---- here it's actually hotter in town because of all the concrete and pavement than it is in the country where there are fields and trees absorbing much of the heat and sun. I wonder if French in the countryside are even dying at all.
So quit whining ya' bunch of surrender monkeys!
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