French disquiet at heat's toll

"It's not a political or medical problem, but a social one," Guillausseau agrees. "Society has become too materialistic," he says, adding that "religion doesn't play such a big role anymore. The fabric of society has changed. We don't have respect or time for our elders anymore."

Still, many blame the government. President Jacques Chirac is under pressure from the opposition and the media to explain how three weeks of intense heat could have taken such a toll.

Fifty-one percent of the French believe the government was "incompetent" in dealing with the situation, according to a poll in the newspaper Le Parisien last week. Some doctors and health workers have accused the government of ignoring early warning signs that hospital morgues were filling up fast and staff were overstretched.

Mr. Chirac, who was relaxing with his wife, Bernadette, in Canada while deaths mounted at home, has been severely criticized in the media, even by the traditionally sympathetic Le Figaro, for his three-week absence and initial "deafening" silence about the fatal heat wave.

Other government officials were also on holiday, an absence the opposition has called a "vacation of power."

Late last week, Chirac promised an inquiry into the handling of the disaster, as well as the creation of new state measures for taking better care of France's growing number of elderly. But these announcements were dismissed by critics as "too little too late."

Medical unions, the opposition, and left-wing media have called for health minister Jean-François Mattei to be sacked, but a government spokesman said after a cabinet meeting Thursday that the possibility had not been raised.

So far, the only political victim of the crisis has been Dr Lucien Abenhaïm, the former French surgeon general, who resigned, saying he was a "scapegoat."

Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has urged the nation to be "cautious" regarding death estimates. A government report on the heat crisis is expected within a month.

If the 10,000 figure were proven to be accurate, it would top the number of people who died in car accidents in France last year, which was 8,000.

France, where temperatures are now cooler, has derived its official death estimates by comparing mortality rates this summer with last summer and attributing the difference to the heat, which reached 104 F. degrees at one point - particularly searing in a country with little air conditioning.

In other parts of Europe also scorched by the heat wave, the death toll has reached about 2,000, with the highest official estimates coming from Portugal, with 1,300 fatalities.

French Red Cross president Marc Gentilini voiced skepticism that all the deaths in France were directly related to the heat. He said he expected the ongoing investigation would enable France to "perhaps lower the figure."

• Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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