European heat wave kills thousands

[Ted Striker]

Heat waves kill more people than any other natural disaster.

That includes floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc...

[Dis]

Las Vegas has no facitilities set up to keep the elderly cool.

Well except for casionos . That's where all the elderly go anyways.

Trust me, if we had a power outage like New York, we would have thousands of people dying.

[HershOstropoler]

Originally posted by Spiffor

According to Libération, 19000 people have died in France since July 25, and there were only 16000 during the same period last year.
I'd assume a fraction of this variation comes from the demographic evolution, but I suppose the huge majority of this variation comes from the heat.

Mortality rates flactuate a lot and are closely related to the weather, even without extreme conditions (eg winter mortality is usually higher). France seems to be the only one doing such an estimate by year to year comparisons. Though I'm sure if you compare a very mild week of 2002 with a normal week in 2003, you'll have hundreds more deaths. You also get higher mortality due to high ozone concentrations, smog etc. In the end, it's a statistical game of how close a connection to the heat you require to determine a heat-related death.

As for AC, in a normal year I'd need it on maybe 5 days at most. Not really worth it... that may change for a lot of southern europe though.

[Cimbri]

The heat is wearing off here in Northern Europe. So long, heat wave

[Sava]

It's Bush's fault!!!

since when did you become a Bush-fan-boy? geez...

anyways, Bush DID manipulate documents from HIS OWN EPA that mentioned global warming. He carefully omitted all references to it.

It's a shame, Spiffor. What is the French government doing to help people? In Chicago, they have these special city groups that come to the aid of senior citizens, bringing water, etc. The city also has air conditioned shelters that people can take refuge in.

[alva]

It's actually quite cold here today, now where 's that sun!

[Sava]

Originally posted by alva
It's actually quite cold here today, now where 's that sun!

It's been reasonably normal in the Chicago area. As usual, it's beastly humid and muggy. Summer started with a seemingly unending band of thunderstorms, now it's more of a cycle of 4 or 5 90+ degree days with gross humidity, then a T-Storm, then one reasonably mild day around 75-80... then 90's again. I don't mind heat.... I hate humidity.

[The Mad Monk]

It's getting worse...

13,600 KILLED BY HEATWAVE Aug 21 2003








UNDERTAKERS in France estimate the recent heatwave killed more than 13,600 people.

Funeral home giant OGF say almost 3500 people will have died in Paris alone by the end of the month.

Their figures are almost two-and-a-half times the French government's heat- related death toll. Health minister Jean-Francois Mattei conceded on Monday that it was "plausible" that up to 5000 people may have died in France, almost twice as many as previously feared.

However, he insisted that figure was a hypothesis and that the final toll was not expected for several weeks.

The OGF toll is based on comparisons with last August's death rate.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/content_objectid=13315579_method=full_siteid=89488_headline=-13%2D600%2DKILLED%2DBY%2DHEATWAVE-name_page.html

[Hercules]

Dry heat I can take during the day. It's the humidity I hate

And at the other end -25C I can tolerate quite well for a while but it's wind chill that makes it unpleasant outdoors.

So -25C with no wind is bearable but say -18C?with wind chill lowering the temp to -25C is not.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by The Mad Monk
It's getting worse...
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/co...name_page.html

Ugh.
I've just read an article about this in Libération. While these figures have a margin error (funeral companies extrapolate their own extra activity to get these figures), they sure are really worrisome.
However, so far the most reliable figures are those of the State, since it registers every death and can count them with 100% fiability. An Inquiry has started and should show its results in the next month as to how many people have dies because of the heat. Figures are already extremely high, with about double mortality in Paris and such

[Heresson]

I was in france during the heat wave; the worse was when I was travelling over 800 kms from Netherlands to Poitiers
in a car without air conditioning... And there was no shadows at the stops, so the car was getting even hotter than... It was bad. But I'd have never suspected there'd be
such losses. Scary.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Heresson
I was in france during the heat wave; the worse was when I was travelling over 800 kms from Netherlands to Poitiers
in a car without air conditioning... And there was no shadows at the stops, so the car was getting even hotter than... It was bad. But I'd have never suspected there'd be
such losses. Scary.

I hope you didn't have any traffic jams. Under such weather, jams can really be bad for your health (pollution + heat).
Did you open your windows during the travel ?

[Heresson]

What a care
I did open window, but only a bit, as my parents didn't allow me to open them more. The result of of the onened window after several days was stucked ear - I barely heard anything through it for a couple of days.

[The Mad Monk]

"Stucked ear"?

[TheStinger]

How were any of the deaths the govts fault, are they supposed to alter the weather now