Hundreds of bodies unclaimed after French heatwave

As many as 400 unidentified or abandoned bodies, some in refrigerated trucks, awaited temporary burial today outside Paris as authorities struggled to cope with the fall-out from France’s deadly heat wave.

More than 100 bodies sat in refrigerated trucks outside a city-run warehouse in the southern suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine, reports said. City officials vowed to bury them – whether families claimed them or not.

“Maybe they don’t have relatives – a great-nephew or otherwise – who is interested in a burial,” Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe said.

“In any case, we are doing all that we can so it takes place in the most emotionally honourable conditions.”

Officials were still compiling the casualty count – mainly among the elderly and ailing – from the record heat in the first two weeks of August.

The biggest French chain of undertakers has estimated that more than 10,000 people had died over that span compared to a year earlier, but officials have cautioned that early figures can be misleading.

Newspaper reports today said that between 300 and 400 bodies had not been claimed outside Paris.

While many opposition leaders have criticised the centre-right government for an allegedly slow response to the crisis, newspapers and editorial writers faulted French citizens in general today.

“These forgotten dead,” wrote daily France-Soir in a front-page headline.

Under the headline “French Barbarity”, Renaud Girard, a writer for Le Figaro newspaper, said: “It’s not up to the Father State to take care of our elderly. It’s up to us.”

City officials said over the weekend that they have identified hundreds of bodies, but say they have been unable to clear the backlog of corpses.

Delanoe said Paris had rented the refrigerated trucks about two weeks ago to help relieve overwhelmed municipal coroner’s offices.

Paris authorities have also decided to extend the legal time permitted between death and burial from six days to 10 to give families additional time to locate the deceased.

Yesterday, city officials launched a telephone drive to reach families unaware of their loved ones’ fate as the makeshift morgues in and around Paris sat filled with unclaimed corpses.