| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 08/17/2003 : 4:46:20 PM
maybe because it's about the french. I found out seconds before I had to leave for a BROCK soundcheck and show and figured it would be mentioned on the board that nite. When I returned, of course, it had not. Keep in mind, later after I found the story, while we were in soundcheck, we heard about the big BLACKOUT. Maybe this story just overshadowed it, but I think it is certainly worthy of note.
France heatwave overloads cemetaries
by Angela Doland, AssPress
PARIS (Aug. 15) - Gravediggers were called back to work on a national holiday Friday to deal with the grim aftermath of a heat wave that left up to 3,000 dead in France.
With morgues full, authorities took over the vast storeroom of a Paris farmers' market or kept bodies in refrigerated tents - as temperatures subsided throughout Europe, ending one of the most severe periods of intense heat on record across the continent.
Morgues and cemeteries have been overwhelmed in the heat wave, which the health minister called ``a true epidemic.'' A Paris regional funeral official said families would likely have to wait 10-15 days to have relatives buried.
``We're explaining the situation to families,'' said Hugues Fauconnet of General Funeral Services, the country's largest undertaker. ``Our most important mission is to preserve the dignity of the deceased.''
Funeral officials claimed the 43,000 square-foot refrigerated storage area of the Paris area's wholesale market in the suburb of Rungis. They planned to place bodies on army cots.
Complicating matters for burials: Many priests were away on summer vacation in predominantly Roman Catholic France, which all but shuts down during August.
Doctors have said many victims, who were generally elderly, died of dehydration heat stroke in the punishing heat wave that has gripped Europe, where many homes and offices lack air conditioning.
Throughout Europe, temperatures settled back to normal Friday. At times, the mercury had hovered around 100 degrees, fanning forest fires and devastating livestock and crops.
Thunderstorms cooled Switzerland on Friday, while in the Netherlands, temperatures were down to 68 degrees. The heat eased in Germany, though officials were still on watch for fires.
France's political climate still simmered with accusations the government didn't do enough to prevent the crisis.
Despite warnings from emergency room doctors, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin waited until Wednesday to order Paris hospitals to prepare more beds and call health care workers back from vacation.
If the government had acted sooner, ``many lives could have been saved,'' Patrick Pelloux, head of the association for French emergency hospital physicians, told Le Parisien newspaper.
Former Health Minister Claude Evin, a Socialist, also accused the center-right government for waiting too long.
Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei toured a hospital Friday in the suburb of Longjumeau that set up a refrigerated tent to store bodies.
``We're on maximum alert,'' said Mattei, who has denied allegations of foot-dragging. ``The crisis is not over.''
Friday was a Roman Catholic holiday, the feast of the Assumption, and most of France had a long weekend. The Paris mayor's office authorized cemetery personnel to stay on the job.
If the preliminary French figures of up to 3,000 deaths holds, the death toll would be among the highest in recent years, officials at the World Health Organization in Geneva said.
About 2,600 heat-related deaths were recorded in India five years ago, and roughly 500 people died from heat-related causes in 1995 in Chicago, according to WHO experts.
No other European countries reported deaths anywhere near the scale of those in France. Spain, for example, has recorded 42. Germany and Italy haven't issued figures on heat-related deaths, saying such figures are difficult to come by because heat may be just one factor contributing to a person's death.
08/15/03 14:43 EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press.
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| 16 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 08/27/2003 : 4:05:52 PM
tericee said: quote:
Ishmael might say that the deaths of large numbers of people is nature's way of regaining equilibrium.
And it may be, BUT we can still mourn the loss. |
| dan p. |
Posted - 08/25/2003 : 2:18:27 PM
that may be. |
| tericee |
Posted - 08/25/2003 : 09:38:34 AM
Ishmael might say that the deaths of large numbers of people is nature's way of regaining equilibrium. |
| LoveToday |
Posted - 08/23/2003 : 09:01:30 AM
I can handle any length of time without electricity.
I don't think ANY mass death of ANY kind ANYWHERE will make me stronger in any way... just numb... and thats how people affected with such trauma and tragedy must feel. Lost and numb. Is that how the USA should be too? I dont think so. |
| dan p. |
Posted - 08/23/2003 : 12:52:11 AM
and we can't handle 4 hours of no electricity.
we need to be toughened up. people don't believe i'm serious when i say this, but i am. i think more people need to die in large numbers in the usa. columbine wasn't enough. 9/11 hit nearer the mark, but it still clearly isn't enough.
don't get offended. it's true, we, as a nation, are soft. if we had people dying in large numbers all the time, we'd be able handle bullshit like 4 hour power outages.
usually i get someone who says "how you like it if some of the people who died were people you loved?" i would hate it. what a stupid question. it doesn't change my point mass death will toughen us up. |
| Arthen |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 2:21:40 PM
I understand and also agree. I really think they give Socialism a bad name. |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 2:16:09 PM
I would definitely agree with you about the French govt, but should we be surprised? It is the French govt after all.
Hope noone takes that the wrong way and thinks I am making lite of the situation, I really have strong anti-French govt sentiment. I did even before this and this only strengthens my feelings about their ineptitude. They are so damn wishy-washy! |
| Arthen |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 2:02:53 PM
Oh, believe me, I'd posted my disgust at the whole situation on my personal website.
It greatly disturbs me that over 10,000 people die in a heat wave where one of the top temperatures was 104, weather we here in CA deal with every Summer on a regular basis.
Aaybe it's because we as people here in the US have a hard time comprehending the actual figure. 10,000 people. That's insane. There were around 20,000 people at the DMB concert I went to, it's like if instantly half of them dissapeared.
I don't think the French Government has handled this well at all. |
| LoveToday |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 1:53:29 PM
My pleasure.  |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 12:24:50 PM
Plague, famine, and a plethora of other things killing 10,000 is easier for me to comprehend, but that many dying from something as simple as heat is astonishing.
Hey LoveToday, sorry if I lumped you in with my blanket statement, I did read your earlier post and saw that you were as disturbed and as moved as me. It's amazing to me what we as a society are able read something like that and not be shocked and astounded. It just seems like it gets worse everyday and with every new tragedy, it just makes the next one easier to gloss over. Nothing seems to shock us anymore and that is very sad. 10,000 people dead should shock and revolt us no matter what the cause. Of course thats just my opinion. Maybe I am overly sensitive. I just think we have so much bad news thrown at us these days it's like sensory overload and we just don't comprehend the magnitude of these events, but I am rambling again on my little soapbox. I will step down, thanx for your TIMe. |
| LoveToday |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 10:17:46 AM
I read every word Fluffy... and I agree whole-heartedly with you. It turns my stomach. My faith in this race (not the rat race... the HUMAN RACE) dwindles every day. If everyone helped ONE person....
I would help a hundred.
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| Fluffy |
Posted - 08/22/2003 : 08:19:36 AM
Just in case people missed it, I know it's alot to read:
10,000 DEAD FROM HEAT!!!!
I guess this just doesn't shock anyone as much as me. In this day and age for so many(and I mean MANY)to be dying in heat that residents of the American SW take for granted, its pretty shocking and definitely disturbing. Thats alot of PEOPLE! To put it into a perspective that Americans might be able to relate to, that's more than 3 times the number of people who died in the WTC. It's a hard thing for me to wrap my brain around. |
| Fluffy |
Posted - 08/21/2003 : 4:03:35 PM
Chirac Pledges Action; Toll Grows
by John Leicester, The AssPress
PARIS (Aug. 21) - President Jacques Chirac promised to correct failings in France's health service Thursday, his first comment on a heat wave his government said probably killed 10,000 people.
Chirac, under fire from opposition politicians and newspapers for remaining silent during the crisis, noted that many victims ``died alone in their homes.''
He said he has asked for a study of the crisis and its causes from his embattled government, and promised proposals by October to better care for France's growing numbers of elderly people.
``Everything will be done to correct the insufficiencies that we noted in our health system,'' the president said in an address after a Cabinet meeting on the heat that baked France in the first two weeks of August.
The minister for the elderly, Hubert Falco, said after the meeting that ``most probably'' 10,000 people died. That matched an estimate released a day earlier by France's largest chain of undertakers.
The heat wave, which saw temperatures go as high as 104, caused morgues and funeral homes to overflow with bodies, overwhelmed hospitals and prompted painful soul-searching about France's attitudes about the elderly.
``These dramas again shed light on the solitude of many of our aged or handicapped citizens,'' said Chirac. ``Aged and handicapped people should be able to count on the solidarity of the French.''
Some critics blamed families for abandoning elderly relatives alone at home while they took August vacations. Health workers blamed understaffing and underfunding at hospitals and retirement homes. Many accused the government of doing too little, too late.
In an apparent effort to calm the storm of criticism, Chirac said ``today, the time is for contemplation, solidarity and action.''
He called the heat wave ``exceptional,'' echoing some government health officials who said little more could have been done to save lives in such extreme weather.
That Chirac addressed the nation live on radio and television was a measure of the gravity of the crisis faced by his center-right administration. As president, Chirac generally tends to stay above the fray of day-to-day domestic politics - an attitude critics have begun to assail considering the high death toll.
Chirac was vacationing in Canada during the heat wave and did not speak about the crisis in public, although aides said he was following the situation. Still, his decision not to break off his vacation irked some of Chirac's opponents.
``What wounded the French was the feeling that their leaders were not present on a moral, human and emotional level,'' Socialist lawmaker Jack Lang, a former education minister, told the daily Le Parisien. ``They simply ask: 'Why were you so far away from us during this testing time?'''
The newspaper said 51 percent of 1,000 people polled believed the government response was inadequate.
``Chirac: a long silence that surprises,'' conservative-leaning Le Figaro said in an inside-page headline Thursday.
``Chirac counts the dead,'' said the left-leaning daily Liberation, over a cartoon of Chirac finger-pointing with the prime minister and the health minister.
Without giving a death toll, Chirac said the heat ``caused a very large number of victims.''
He promised a review of France's health surveillance, alert and prevention bodies ``to avoid such dramas in the future.''
He also said emergency services would be given means to better deal with temporary crises. He stopped short, however, of saying whether the government - already criticized by the European Union for overspending on the public sector - would give emergency services more funding.
France's medical system is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. But some health workers said it fell short in August because of a law which has restricted France's working week to 35 hours, which has led to staff shortages, and because hospital and retirement home workers were on holiday.
Opposition parties, which have called for a parliamentary inquiry into the government response, remained critical Thursday.
Dominique Voynet, a Green Party leader and former environment minister, said the resignation of Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei would ``probably be useful,'' but wouldn't be enough.
``We don't need the resignation, it's a symbol,'' she said on Europe-1 radio. ``The political weakness is in the whole government.''
She accused the government of trying to appear sympathetic to victims, while having cut budgets for health.
``I am very shocked to see and to hear these days the compassionate complaints - the crocodile tears,'' she said.
08/21/03 11:47 EDT
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. |
| LoveToday |
Posted - 08/18/2003 : 2:02:53 PM
Oh so they blow off their OWN people too? I bet they could have set up air conditioned relief areas for those people most affected. At schools or auditoriums. Hockey rinks? Maybe a museum or two? You know they have plenty of those. I bet they are all air conditioned too. Nice and comfy for all the tourists clenching dollar bills in their fat fists.
Sorry for the anger...This shit pisses me off to no end.
THIS is why I don't watch the news.
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| KevinLesko |
Posted - 08/18/2003 : 02:09:58 AM
I really guess it is a matter of not being used to or conditioned to the heat. I remember a few years ago when a simmilar deal happened in Texas. It really surprised me at the time because I was living in 120+ degrees myself, and running and playing basketball daily in that heat, so it just didn't make sence to me. But now I see that being exposed to such conditions suddenly, and without preperation can be dangerous. |
| Arthen |
Posted - 08/18/2003 : 02:00:53 AM
?Yeah, I've been reading about it. It's pretty insane. |
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