{"id":1518887,"date":"2026-06-29T03:24:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1518887"},"modified":"2026-06-29T03:24:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T08:24:23","slug":"europes-record-heat-has-overwhelmed-paris-mortuaries-and-left-families-in-distress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1518887","title":{"rendered":"Europe’s record heat has overwhelmed Paris mortuaries and left families in distress"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"
FILE – Tourists enjoy cooling off at a public water fountain In Paris, on June 26, 2026. (AP Photo\/Christophe Ena, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>PARIS (AP) \u2014 Every few minutes, the mortuary owner’s phone rings. Since a record-smashing heat wave started taking lives and storage space for bodies in Paris and beyond, the funeral directors and mourning families calling him mostly have the same question: Do you have room for one more?<\/p>\n

With all 32 places in his cold room taken, Zouhaeir Hertelli reluctantly has to gently say \u201cNon,\u201d over and over and over again.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re facing a really catastrophic situation,” he said. \u201cI’m getting hundreds of calls.”<\/p>\n

As the historic heat wave shifted its deadly temperatures eastward this weekend to other parts of Europe, France began counting the human cost it left in its wake.<\/p>\n

Tallying heat-related deaths could take time<\/strong><\/p>\n

The statistical and public health work of tallying heat-related deaths could take weeks or months. But it’s already apparent that the toll exacted by the intense, unrelenting extreme temperatures was terrible in France, the first country hit from mid-June, particularly among older people who died at home.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re dealing with an enormous spike of deaths because of the heat wave and we’re really full, full, full,\u201d Hertelli said.<\/p>\n

In its first preliminary estimate, the national public health agency said deaths surged during the heat wave’s peak in France last week, which roasted most of Europe’s largest country with temperatures that soared in many places above 40C (104 F) and also broke records for nighttime highs \u2014 an exhausting one-two punch for fatigued bodies.<\/p>\n

Public Health France said there were more than 1,200 deaths last Wednesday, when France registered its hottest-ever day, breaking a record that had been set just the previous day.<\/p>\n

Deaths then increased to more than 1,400 on Thursday and another 1,400 on Friday, it said. By way of comparison, the pre-heat wave death rate in April and May was around 900 to 1,000 per day, it said.<\/p>\n

The agency cautioned that its estimate of at least 1,000 additional deaths during those three sizzling days alone is expected to increase as more death certificates come in for people who died at home and in care facilities for older people, where most deaths are still not registered electronically.<\/p>\n

“Mortality will as a consequence be higher than these first figures,\u201d the agency said.
\nMany who died were 65 and older<\/p>\n

It said that 85% of the deaths registered so far during the three days it studied involved people aged 65 and above and that there was a sharp increase in deaths at home \u2014 up by about 40% \u2014 particularly in the Paris region.<\/p>\n

Hertelli and others in the funeral industry said Paris mortuaries quickly ran out of storage space. City Hall said two temporary storage units, with 20 places each, were installed for municipal mortuaries and that city hospitals provided another 50 additional places.<\/p>\n

Still, Hertelli said funeral directors he spoke to told him they were having to store bodies as far away as Chartres \u2014 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Paris \u2014 and in other regions around the capital. To open more space, he said he has asked authorities for permission to temporarily install refrigerated containers outside his mortuary, which is next to Paris’ Orly airport, but is still waiting for a green light.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamilies are suffering,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have no solution to offer them, because the funeral homes are full. So we are deeply affected, we have empathy for them, but there\u2019s nothing we can offer. We are really facing a problem, a big problem,” he said.<\/p>\n

Temperatures reached historic highs<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historic high temperatures in 2003, surpassed this time, were blamed for 15,000 deaths, provoking a national reckoning about care of older people, who were particularly hard-hit. More than 5,700 deaths were also attributed to heat during an exceptionally hot summer last year.<\/p>\n

V\u00e9ronique Bertrand, a Paris funeral director, said she fears that lessons have been forgotten.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of the deaths that we are dealing with at the moment were people who were living alone at home, isolated. Given the circumstances in which they were found, there can be no other conclusion than that these were deaths caused by the heat,” Bertrand said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people absolutely need to wake up, that solidarity needs to come back, that what happened in 2003 led to a movement in that direction, with people thinking about their neighbors, of those around them who live alone and perhaps checking from time to time that they’re drinking water and are being looked after,” she said.<\/p>\n

“With the passing years, we\u2019ve perhaps forgotten that it could happen again and that things would even perhaps be worse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every few minutes, the mortuary owner’s phone rings. Since a record-smashing heat wave started taking lives and storage space for bodies in Paris and beyond, the funeral directors and mourning families calling him mostly have the same question: Do you have room for one more?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1518888,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1502,1504],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1518887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abc-heads","category-abc-world-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":true,"date":"2026-07-01 03:23:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[0],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1518887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1518889,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518887\/revisions\/1518889"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1518888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1518887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1518887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1518887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}