FRANCE: Paris is being cooked in Europe's scorching weather. Lara Marlowe describes what it is like
France is sweating through its hottest summer in at least 54 years, with local records of nearly 42 degrees celsius having been surpassed this week in the south-west. The all-time highest temperature recorded in France - 44 degrees in Toulouse in July 1923 - may soon be broken.
Temperatures are 10 degrees above seasonal averages, and the heatwave is having calamitous effects on air and water pollution. Overheated nuclear power stations may have to be shut down.
The hot weather has worsened the drought which started last winter, prompting regional authorities to offer financial assistance to farmers. Fifty-four French departments have restricted the use of water for gardens, swimming pools and car-washing. And the scorching temperatures are a nightmare for fire-fighters, who have seen 33,500 hectares of Mediterranean countryside go up in flames since July 1st.
And it's getting worse. Meteorologists predict even higher temperatures today, since a mass of hot air has floated up from Africa and is sitting over the country, fending off the Scandinavian breezes which could deliver people from this roasting. It's supposed to start cooling off by Friday, but predictions are that temperatures will nonetheless remain between 35 and 40 degrees through the weekend.
And that could mean 400 hot guests at the star-studded wedding of Georgina Ahern and Nicky Byrne near Chartres on Saturday.
Two earlier heatwaves this summer, starting on June 20th and July 15th, barely fazed this correspondent. Having grown up on the edge of the California desert, and having spent eight years in the Middle East, I thought I was impervious to hot weather. Years ago, I did once complain about the difficulty of working in Baghdad when it was 45 degrees in the shade. "Why would you need to work in the shade?" my editor responded.
These days, there is little shade in this beautiful city. Children and adults cavort in public fountains. The tabloid Le Parisien yesterday published a list of tips for keeping cool in Paris. Lines 1 and 14 of the Paris metro are air-conditioned; I briefly considered riding back and forth all day. There are 13 air-conditioned bus routes, and two underground air-conditioned shopping malls. Or, the newspaper suggested, take refuge in the cool, tomb-like interior of an old church.
Le Parisien and the other tabloid, France Soir, have opened their columns to "the dog day galley slaves" - construction workers, bakers, pizza-makers, café waiters and laundresses - who labour in ovenlike conditions.
By comparison, a normal resident's discomfort is negligible, but it's disheartening to see Spike, the moggy from Bray, splayed out like a hunter's trophy on the living-room floor. And it's sad to watch the plants I nurtured after last winter's big frost shrivel and die.
Even my system of opening windows after dark, then shutting them and drawing the curtains at dawn, barely makes a difference. These last two nights, the air that filled the apartment felt like a blow-torch.
Special treatment has been devised to soothe zoo inmates. The bears at Thoiry, south of Paris, are fed chunks of ice with mackerel frozen into them. The same method is used to cool off the snow leopard in the Nord Pas de Calais Zoo. In Bordeaux, they're feeding the primates worm and fish popsicles. At Fréjus, the elephants are given two showers daily.
Even the French name for the hot spell - la canicule - has an animal connotation. It refers to the dog star Sirius, or Canicula, which rises and sets with the sun between July 22nd and August 23rd. Whether this has anything to do with the torrid weather is anybody's guess.
Although experts agree that French temperatures are rising as a result of the greenhouse effect, the present heatwave is allegedly not caused by global warming - merely that hot air mass from Africa.
The high temperatures magnify the ill-effects of car exhaust fumes, and since Sunday 17 French cities have surpassed the pollution alert level of 180 micrograms of ozone per cubic metre of air. Several cities have gone beyond the EU's emergency threshold of 240 micrograms. A government communiqué has predicted that the ozone pollution will be "prolonged and aggravated in coming days" and advises small children, old people and those with respiratory ailments to stay indoors. Speed limits have been reduced by 30 kph in affected cities, although motorists seem to take little notice.
The electricity company EDF has taken a novel approach to cooling off its nuclear power plant at Fessenheim in the Upper Rhineland. The plant is one of the oldest in France, dating from the 1970s. Safety regulations demand that it be shut down if the inside temperature reaches 50 degrees. The interior of the reactor containment reached 48.2 degrees on July 31st, so authorities began spraying the outside of the cement enclosure with garden sprinklers. The Green Party has condemned the measure as an experimental, do-it-yourself solution to an extreme situation.
Although they are more modern, nuclear power plants on the Loire River are also threatened with closure. The plants reinject hot water into the river after it has been used to cool reactors. With the river dangerously low, the hot water is less diluted, and it is killing fish and breeding algae.
For once, the French media are paying attention to the fact that the heatwave is a Europe-wide phenomenon, bringing suffering across the continent. Eleven Spaniards have died, most of them old people who became dehydrated. Five people have died of dehydration in northern Germany, while eleven others perished in the fires which have destroyed more than 50,000 hectares in Portugal over the past 10 days. Italy has recalled the fire-fighters it sent to help France; they are needed to confront blazes in northern Italy.
But there are beneficiaries of this lethally-hot summer. Producers of ice-cream, soft drinks and mineral water are reporting a big rise in sales. And the producers of red wine are gloating over what promises to be a grand millésime.