Well, Yee-Haw! Time to gas up the ol' SUV. |
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.
It's all BRAVADO.
Some of the most compassionate people in the world are on this site. (But, you know that, eh?)
Hmmmm, French Flies. Maybe if they were Freedom Flies, they'd survive a battle, even if it is only with the heat.
French Surrender to the Heat!!
(film at eleven)
Hb
- I prefer to think of it as a "Screw the French so long as they are the French" kick.
I fear some are perpetuating the outdated myth that Conservatives are mean-spirited and prejudiced against the weak. Truly enlightened Libs will tell you that we simply hate everybody! It is part of our psychological makeup.
I was born in a cross-fire-hurricane.
Had a boss years ago the did a stint with The Foxboro Company. He explained that it was all but water coming out
of a turbine, since the condesation reduced the gas volume, and thereby created a vacuum effect also contributing to
mechanical energy transfer, hence, high efficiency.
Or that's the way I remember it, some 20-odd years ago.
Generally 50 cycle AC...
Ah yes, the adjustment label on belt drive turntables if in Canada...(IIRC - also 20+ years)
Well, Yee-Haw! Time to gas up the ol' SUV. |
WTF?!?!
As we all know, those pesky U-232 atoms HATE a warm, sunny day! They just NEED to shut down the reactor, since NOTHING inside it is air-conditioned, nor is the reactor itself under ANY sort of controlled enviroment!
Jerks...no wonder they STINK!
This is a Frog Gov't. plot at forcing the populace into such discomfort, that they will accept the Watermellon EnviroMENTAList indoctrination into the whole "Global Warming" crap!
He was correct, pretty much. Its still steam at the end of the turbine though barely, but the condensor cools it back into water. Pumping the water, along with the condensing effect creates the vacuum that aids effeciency. It also serves to get the water back to the boiler to cycle through again. There's a lot more to it, of course, but I'm not expert enough to give great detail - I work on the electrical side of things.
Ok, I'll give you an example you can understand. Think snow. Being from Colorado, it's been with great amusement that I've watched Southerner's panic over the odd freak snow storm over the years. I still remember a Sheriff's deputy stopping by our house in Pineland, Texas to make sure we were ok after a rare freeze/snow, years ago. Highway 96, well, it was closed for 2 days with just a little dust of snow and ice. It wouldn't have been worth sending the plows out in any clime that was used to snow. Motorists would have just had to have driven over it.
Same deal with these heat waves in areas that aren't used to it. It's like Southerners and snow.
It's easy to get caught off guard for atypical weather. Forget France, look at Chicago just a few years back. Elderly Chicagoans were dying in droves in that heat wave.
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Lemme get this straight. You tellin' me that this here Global Warming kills the French?