France’s public health agency announced Sunday that the country experienced roughly 1,000 more deaths than usual last week during the peak of a record-shattering heat wave, even as other parts of Europe faced yet another day of broken temperature records, dangerous wildfires, and widespread heat-related suffering.
The extreme heat continued pushing eastward across the continent over the weekend, toppling temperature records in several nations along the way.
In Germany, a new nighttime temperature record was set Sunday in Kubschütz, located in eastern Saxony, where temperatures never fell below 29.4 degrees Celsius — that’s about 84.9 degrees Fahrenheit. That overnight record came just hours after a daytime record of 41.5 degrees Celsius, or 106.7 degrees Fahrenheit, was measured in Möckern-Drewitz in Saxony-Anhalt. Those figures came from preliminary data released by the German Weather Service, known as DWD. Remarkably, the previous record had only been set the day before.
A new study released Friday by the World Weather Attribution — a Europe-based scientific collaboration — concluded that the extreme heat and humidity gripping Europe this week simply could not have occurred without the influence of climate change. The rapid analysis found that conditions like these would have been virtually impossible just 50 years ago, and are now 200 times more likely than they were just two decades ago.
France’s national public health agency, Public Health France, reported that death tolls surged dramatically during the worst days of the heat wave. On Wednesday — when France endured its hottest temperatures ever recorded — more than 1,200 deaths were counted. That figure climbed to more than 1,400 deaths on each of the two days that followed. For context, France’s typical daily death rate during April and May, before the heat arrived, hovered between 900 and 1,000. The agency calculated that at least 1,000 deaths above normal occurred during those three days alone, and officials cautioned that number will likely grow as additional data — including deaths that occurred at home — is gathered.
The agency also noted a sharp rise in emergency calls to private residences, particularly in the Paris region. The deadliest impact was felt in areas that had been placed under red extreme heat warnings, which covered roughly three-quarters of France at the heat wave’s peak. Officials said that 85 percent of the deaths involved people aged 65 and older.
Germany also faced serious wildfire threats. In Gohrischheide in eastern Germany, a fire broke out in a large forest that remains contaminated with leftover ammunition from World War II, making the firefighting effort significantly more hazardous. A similar situation unfolded near the town of Traisen in southwestern Germany, where a forest fire ignited in an area containing unexploded ordnance. Firefighting operations had to be temporarily halted after explosions occurred, and a bomb disposal unit was brought in to continuously evaluate the danger, according to the German news agency dpa.
Meanwhile, city fire departments across Germany were overwhelmed with heat-related medical emergencies. Berlin alone saw 500 additional ambulance calls on Saturday, the vast majority of them tied to the heat.
Berlin police came up with an unusual way to bring some relief to residents and visitors. Officers deployed two large water cannons — equipment typically reserved for crowd control during protests — in front of the city’s famous Brandenburg Gate and sprayed cool water over cheering crowds gathered in the heat.
The extreme temperatures also took a toll on Germany’s transportation infrastructure. Concrete surfaces on highways cracked and buckled across the country, and the national rail operator Deutsche Bahn urged passengers to avoid non-essential train travel over the weekend. In the eastern city of Leipzig, tram service was suspended entirely until early Monday morning after the intense heat caused the sealant used in track joints and switches to melt and clump together throughout the city’s transit network, according to the Leipzig Public Transportation Authority.
Elsewhere in Europe, Greece’s Civil Protection agency issued a warning Sunday of a “very high fire risk” across five regions of the country. Wildfires are a persistent challenge in Greece given its dry, mountainous terrain and more than 100 inhabited islands. Authorities there have been exploring new space-based technology to help detect and combat fires more quickly.
In Denmark, which set new temperature records on Saturday, the extreme heat gave way to powerful thunderstorms. By Sunday morning, the country had recorded 1,156 lightning strikes, according to public broadcaster DR.
