Europe’s record heat has overwhelmed Paris mortuaries and left families in distress

Europe’s record heat has overwhelmed Paris mortuaries and left families in distress 0 seconds of 1 minute, 2 secondsVolume 0% Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts Keyboard ShortcutsEnabledDisabled Shortcuts Open/Close/ or ? Play/PauseSPACE Increase Volume↑ Decrease Volume↓ Seek Forward→ Seek Backward← Captions On/Offc Fullscreen/Exit Fullscreenf Mute/Unmutem Decrease Caption Size- Increase Caption Size+ or = Seek %0-9 Next Up Tom Holland and Zendaya swing into Paris amid heat wave 00:59 00:00 01:02 01:02 More Videos 00:59 Tom Holland and Zendaya swing into Paris amid heat wave 01:27 Yodelers brave record heat as national festival opens in Basel 00:47 Family and community members mourn loved one killed in Montreal shooting 01:19 Feds tout record results in a nationwide crackdown on healthcare fraud 01:10 Dutch fans flood Kansas City with orange as the ‘Oranjebus’ makes its way downtown 01:14 Analysts assess how and if Andy Burnham will forge different path for UK than Keir Starmer 01:01 Austrian drag queens brave record temperatures at annual drag sports event 01:00 Argentina fans react after Messi sets World Cup scoring record Close 1 of 6 | France" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="154557" data-entity-type="organization">Public Health France said there were more than 1,200 deaths last Wednesday, when France registered its hottest-ever day. Deaths then increased to more than 1,400 on Thursday and another 1,400 on Friday. The agency cautioned that its estimate of at least 1,000 additional deaths during those three hot days alone is expected to increase as more death certificates are registered. (AP video by John Leicester; production by Jeffrey Schaeffer) 2 of 6 | Véronique Bertrand, a funeral director, works the phones Sunday, June 28, 2026, at her office in Paris. (AP Photo/John Leicester) 3 of 6 | Tourists enjoy cooling off at a public water fountain In Paris, on June 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File) 4 of 6 | Zouhaeir Hertelli, a mortuary and funeral service director, walks out of his coffin storeroom near Paris’ Orly airport on Sunday, June 28, 2026. (AP Photo/John Leicester) 5 of 6 | A person cools off at Trocadero fountain near the Eiffel Tower during a heat wave in Paris, on June 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File) 6 of 6 | Parisians bath in the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris, as the national weather service, France" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="150411" data-entity-type="organization">Meteo France, placed 54 departments, about half the country, under a red heat wave alert, on June 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena, File) By John Leicester and Jeffrey Schaeffer Updated 9:32 AM MESZ, June 29, 2026 Leer en español Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Paris (AP) — Every few minutes, the mortuary owner’s phone rings. Since a record-smashing heat wave started taking lives and storage space for bodies in Paris and beyond, the funeral directors and mourning families calling him mostly have the same question: Do you have room for one more? 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,” he said. “I’m getting hundreds of calls.” As the historic heat wave shifted its deadly temperatures eastward this weekend to other parts of Europe, France began counting the human cost it left in its wake. Parisians and tourists tried to beat the heat on Monday by seeking shade and flocking to air conditioned museums, as temperatures in the French capital reached 44 degrees Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit). France is gritting its teeth for a week of record-busting temperatures, sweltering under a heat wave that combines daytime highs above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) and sleep-robbing sweaty nights. (AP video shot by Oleg Cetinic) The statistical and public health work of tallying heat-related deaths could take weeks or 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. In its first preliminary estimate, the national public health agency said deaths surged during the heat wave’s peak in France last week, which roasted most of Europe’s largest country with temperatures that soared in many places above 40C (104 F) and also broke records for nighttime highs — an exhausting one-two punch for fatigued bodies. heat wave and high humidity will blast much of the eastern US this week, meteorologists say 3 MIN READ 32 France records around 1,000 additional deaths as extreme heat breaks European records 4 MIN READ 125 4 dead amid flooding caused by heavy rains, Kentucky governor says 1 MIN READ France" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="154557" data-entity-type="organization">Public Health France said there were more than 1,200 deaths last Wednesday, when France registered its hottest-ever day, breaking a record that had been set just the previous day. Deaths then increased to more than 1,400 on Thursday and another 1,400 on Friday, it said. By way of comparison, the pre-heat wave 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 registered electronically. “Mortality will as a consequence be higher than these first figures,” the agency said. It said that 85% 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% — 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. Still, Hertelli said funeral directors he spoke to told him they were having to store bodies as far away as Chartres — 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Paris — and in other regions around the capital. To open more space, he said he has asked authorities for permission to temporarily install refrigerated containers outside his mortuary, which is next to Paris’ Orly airport, but is still waiting for a green light. “Families are suffering,” he said. “We have no solution to offer them, because the funeral homes are full. So we are deeply affected, we have empathy for them, but there’s nothing we can offer. We are really facing a problem, a big problem,” he said. Historic high temperatures in 2003, surpassed this time, were blamed for 15,000 deaths, provoking a national reckoning about care of older people, who were particularly hard-hit. More than 5,700 deaths were also attributed to heat during an exceptionally hot summer last year. Véronique 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 neighbors, 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.”