WHEN the canicule – heatwave – hits France, we deal with it in practical, life-saving ways. We have to, for it really is a matter of life or death. Much was learnt from 2003 when temperatures reached more than 40C for eight consecutive days and almost 15,000 people died – mainly the frail and the elderly.
At the end of that August canicule, when bodies were actually discovered decomposing in flats and houses, there was a national uproar with Government blaming families and families blaming Government.
Being August, all ministers were on holiday, as were families, who returned home, or visited parents, to discover horrific scenes.
Although always used to hot summers, particularly in the south, no-one had witnessed such intensity for so long, and many houses built to keep out the cold turned into killing ovens.
There was no emergency plan in place for heat such as was experienced.
Those in the north, without our stone houses that inhale and exhale organically with the weather, were woefully unprepared in the techniques required to stay cool.
Air-conditioning is even now quite rare in all but the more expensive new builds.
Ironically, most of us in the country rely more on dehumidifiers to suck up the water from our damp houses, built as they are on clay floors without foundations.
Yet we also accept that heat causes our clay soil to turn to concrete and our houses to move and crack. You work it out, for it is beyond me.
Anyway, so far, our main concession to controlling the heat has been to buy fans, which, in truth, simply disturb and move the hot air around us.
But now, since 2013, canicule warnings are updated, along with temperatures, throughout the day and evening on TV and radio stations.
Special cool-rooms are opened in towns and cities where air-conditioning and water are free for all.
Neighbours are asked to check on each other, particularly those at most risk and a good maire, as most of them are, checks him, or herself, by a round robin of calls.
We are expecting the 2013 temperature and possibly higher, to reach a peak in the next two days. Indeed, for June, it will be the highest temperature since 1947.
As I write, warnings are out that midnight temperatures in the south west, where I live, will average 30C. At midnight.
Now I know that for most of you staring out at rain, and some still using central heating, the refrain would be: Chance would be a fine thing.
And once I’d have agreed, being a sun worshipper who could lie in the fiercest heat, happy when sweat coursed down my body and liberally applying Hawaiian Tropical Tan, Factor virtually zero.
Stupid woman that I am, I would still be out there if I didn’t have trouble enough breathing at the best of times.
I crave sunshine – the main reason I came here – but the sun has turned against us, or rather we have turned the sun against us in our cavalier disregard of our beautiful planet.
We have made her an enemy through no fault of her own.
No longer has weather a recognisable, comforting pattern in its seasons.
Just a few weeks before this date last year, storms lashed my farmer neighbours’ fields and water coursed through my house wherever it found ingress.
And when this canicule is over, the warnings are already out from the experts that, come July and August (the traditional months), we will experience electrical storms of a ferocity such as we have never known.
Just the other night in Toulouse, one such storm unleashed the wrath of God Himself over the city and surrounding areas, smashing all in its path.
Earthquakes of 5.3 magnitude are disturbing parts of France that have lain peaceful for centuries.
At the moment they are causing mere ripples and just a touch of fear in those close to the epicentre, but more the increasing questions of: What next? When?
I am no longer foolish in disregarding the power of nature. My shutters have remained firmly closed for the past two days and will remain so until all this is over.
Yes, it is dark but cool and I have an electric fan behind me to be switched on when my chest tightens and I need to reach for my rescue inhaler.
Anything over 32C is dangerous for people with lung disease so they say, and my phone has the Sapeurs/Pompiers on speed dial.
I cannot bring myself to shutter the glass doors I look out from as I sit typing. I need to see the parc and the odd van that passes by, or truly I would be in the basement of hell.
But I have to change my nocturnal habits of surfing the net until 2am before climbing my Miller’s stairs to bed and star fishing for the cold spots.
I should be rising with the sun before it becomes the enemy. I tried this morning when it was a mere 21C at 9am.
It was lovely and the jasmine pulsed but 9am….shudders at the idea of rising at dawn. Non. Switches on fan.
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