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CLIMATE CRISIS

France counts nearly 400 excess deaths during August heatwave

French public health authorities estimate that there were hundreds of excess deaths during the third heatwave of the summer - which spanned just two weeks during August.

Published: 13 September 2023 17:13 CEST
France counts nearly 400 excess deaths during August heatwave
A woman uses a fan as she sits on a street in Toulouse, southwestern France, on August 23, 2023, during a heatwave in France. (Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP)

France’s public health agency, Santé Publique France (SPF), said in a press release that according to its preliminary estimates, there were “nearly 400 excess deaths, or an increase of 5.4 percent” during the August heatwave that hit the country.

The press release published on Wednesday covered the late-summer heatwave – the third of the summer – that lasted from August 11th to 26th in France, affecting 52 of the country’s 96 mainland départements.

During the 15-day period, 19 French départements were placed on red alert – the highest warning level issued by France’s national weather forecast service Météo France.

Certain French regions saw higher levels of excess mortality than others – the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region recorded 169 more deaths than they might during a non-heatwave period. Nouvelle-Aquitaine (which contains Bordeaux) registered 120. 

SPF said that the equivalent of 46.3 percent of the French population lived in an area affected by the August heatwave and noted that “people aged 75 and older were the most affected age group”.

They added that no fatal workplace accidents were reported during the heatwave.

In comparison to the first and second heatwaves, the third saw a higher level of excess mortality. During the July 7th to 13th heatwave, public health authorities counted 80 more deaths than during a non-heatwave period and two fatal workplace accidents.

During the second heatwave, from July 17th to 26th, there were “no excess deaths at the national level”.

Nevertheless SPF has clarified that the results are still preliminary and the estimated number of excess deaths does “not reflect the entire impact of heat on health.”

Later in the autumn, French public health authorities are expected to publish a consolidated assessment showing all of the health impacts from extreme heat and level of exposure among France’s population during the summer of 2023. 

During the whole summer of 2022 – which consisted of three heatwaves – SPF recorded 2,816 excess deaths. During heatwave periods in 2022, emergency room visits doubled.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

Rising sea levels threaten Normandy’s historic D-Day beaches

As France prepares to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, erosion and rising sea levels are threatening to strip away what remains of the physical history of the Allied invasion of Europe

Published: 7 May 2024 14:47 CEST
Updated: 11 May 2024 08:14 CEST
Rising sea levels threaten Normandy's historic D-Day beaches

From Ouistreham (Calvados) to Ravenoville (Manche), the Normandy coastline is littered with relics of June 1944. The Normandy tourism office lists more than 90 official D-Day sites, including 44 museums, drawing millions of visitors every year.

But the sea from where liberation came is now threatening to reclaim its heritage: cliffs and dunes are subject to erosion, while marshes and reclaimed land are at risk of being submerged.

The landscapes today of the famed beaches are nothing like the ones codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword, that the Allied forces endured in 1944, an official for the Conservatoire du Littoral in Normandy told AFP. 

The Gold Beach marshes in Ver-sur-Mer, “will be transformed in 10 years or so,” he added, as sea water rises to reclaim land that had been drained in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Mayor of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and director of the Utah Beach Museum Charles de Vallavieille told Ouest France that  “we don’t have the right to do anything” to stop the advance of the sea. “The law protects dykes but not dunes,” he said. “We can’t get any help even though it’s a problem that affects the whole coast – protect one place and the water will go elsewhere”.

Pedestrians walk past remains of the British Artificial harbour at “Gold Beach”. (Photo by Lou BENOIST / AFP)

Between the American and British sectors, the Bessin cliffs – where German artillery batteries pummelled the beaches from hard-to-reach areas such as Pointe du Hoc – have been slowly falling to wave impacts, sea salt, freezes and thaws in the decades since 200 American rangers overran the occupying soldiers there. 

In 2010, the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC), which manages the site, spent $6million to protect it. It “secured the area, [and] consolidated 70 metres […] with reinforced concrete walls, micropiles to stabilise the soil and a complex network of sensors monitoring the subsoil for any significant movement”.

Coastal pathways in the area have been “set back 20 metres” to ensure public safety, the ABMC has said.

But with sea levels rising a few millimetres a year, inexorably and inevitably changing the face of the coastline, nature is reclaiming the beaches of Normandy, and their blood-stained human history will become a matter of historical interpretation, rather physical fact.

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