French heatwave sees bodies pile up as 44C scorcher puts 'catastrophic' strain on mortuaries

French heatwave sees bodies pile up as 44C scorcher puts 'catastrophic' strain on mortuaries Funeral directors are dealing with requests to take bodies every few minutes after a heatwave baked the country and sent temperatures soaring up to 44C degrees Bodies continue to pile up at French mortuaries after a 44C heatwave baked the country. Since the start of a record-smashing heat wave, funeral directors in Paris and beyond have struggled to take on more bodies with phones ringing every few minutes. With all 32 places in his cold room taken, Zouhaeir Hertelli reluctantly has to gently say "Non," over and over and over again. "We're facing a really catastrophic situation. I'm getting hundreds of calls," he said. As the historic heat wave shifted its deadly temperatures eastward this weekend to other parts of Europe, France started to count the human cost left in its wake. The statistical and public heath work of tallying heat-related deaths could take weeks, or even 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. "We're dealing with an enormous spike of deaths because of the heat wave and we're really full, full, full," Hertelli said. Public Health France said there were some 1,200 deaths last Wednesday, when France registered its hottest-ever day, breaking a record that had been set the previous day. Deaths went on to surge to more than 1,400 on Thursday and another 1,400 on Friday, it said. By way of comparison, the pre-heatwave death rate in April and May was around 900 to 1,000 per day, it said. 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 recorded electronically, reports the Associated Press. It said that 85 per cent 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 - up by about 40 per cent - particularly in the Paris region. 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. Veronique Bertrand, a Paris funeral director, said she fears that lessons have been forgotten. "Most 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. "I 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 neighbours, 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. "With the passing years, we've perhaps forgotten that it could happen again and that things would even perhaps be worse."