Hot Paris is nothing like 2003
by Sabastian Rotella
Los Angeles Times

PARIS - The French capital broiled Wednesday.

As the temperature climbed toward 100 degrees, Paris baked, fumed and seethed.

Tempers flared. Taxi drivers and salespeople scowled. Subway passengers resembled sweat-drenched inmates of a rolling, furnace-equipped dungeon. Desperate tourists and natives plunged fully clothed into the ornamental fountains of the Tuileries garden and the Trocadero plaza.

“Paris furnace: 98 degrees in the shade,” trumpeted Le Parisien newspaper, which covers weather with the same scrappy enthusiasm it devotes to crime and politics, on Tuesday.

It could be worse. The death toll in France during a Europe-wide July heat wave has reached an estimated 40. Nothing like the summer of 2003, when killer heat combined with social dysfunction, leaving 15,000 dead.

This time, the government launched a concerted effort to protect the vulnerable. In Paris, 380 retired doctors have joined a program to monitor the sick, elderly and homeless. Emergency services are on alert.

“The catastrophe of 2003 cannot happen again,” Health Minister Xavier Bertrand declared this week.