Understanding the French 2003 Heat Wave Experience: Beyond the heat, a Multi‐Layered Challenge

Abstract

The 2003 heat wave killed nearly 15,000 people in France. It was a stealth killer. “We did not notice anything”, as the Minister of Health declared to the Parliamentary Commission. It is of crucial importance to understand the keys to this collective failure, which has much in common with the Chicago experience in 1995 –the lessons of which had not been grasped nor learned. A four‐layered challenge explains the fiasco. The emergency challenge, which is not the realm of bureaucracies outside the “9/11” bodies. The crisis management challenge, largely documented since the 80s and the 90s, but still poorly known by most organisations, in France and elsewhere. The unconventional crisis challenge, emerging more and more today with “outside‐of‐the‐box” scenarios – and for which very few are ready to prepare, in any country in the world. The “texture” challenge, when the whole fabric of our complex systems (rather than just some specific segment) is suddenly deeply affected — an entirely new front‐line in the crisis world, which urges to switch from a mechanical or an architectural to a more “biological” approach to read, seize, and handle emerging csrises. The 2003 heat fiasco compels us to prepare for far more than climate‐related crises. It calls for a fresh and bold look at our crisis paradigms. As General Foch said: “Gunfire kills, but so do outdated visions”.

Magnitude and frequency of heat and cold waves in recent decades: the case of South America

“…Analysis of the extreme values and trends of interannual ranges of temperatures are crucial since it gives insight into "outside-of-the-box" scenarios (Lagadec, 2004) which very few studies consider. Applications of these analyses are manifold in essential sectors such as local health and social care systems (Carmichael et al, 2012;Gupta and Gregg, 2012).…”

The Nexus of Energy and Water in the United States

“…Heat waves in France in 2003 also caused power plants to draw down their output because of limits on rejection temperatures that are imposed for environmental reasons. [6,24,25] That severe heat wave and drought killed approximately 15,000 people and created river water levels that were too hot for effective power plant cooling. As a consequence, many nuclear power plants had to operate at much reduced capacity and an environmental exemption was enacted to allow the rejection temperatures of cooling water from power plants to exceed prior limits.…”

“…As a consequence, many nuclear power plants had to operate at much reduced capacity and an environmental exemption was enacted to allow the rejection temperatures of cooling water from power plants to exceed prior limits. [24,25] At the same time, 20% of hydropower capacity was not available because of low river levels. [6] That is, just as demand for electricity was spiking for air conditioning in response to the heat, supplies were being cut back.…”

Comment analyser l’absence d’anticipation des risques? Le cas de la canicule de 2003 en France

“…À Chicago comme en France, un grand nombre de personnes sont décédées sans attirer l'attention, jusqu'à ce que les services d'urgences soient débordés et que les responsables des morgues ne sachent plus où stocker les corps. Son analyse des arguments des hommes politiques, qui rejettent toute responsabilité dans le désastre en naturalisant l'événement, s'applique également très bien au cas français (Lagadec, 2004 ;Lagadec, 2005).…”

“…Le cadre cognitif excluant tout apprentissage au sujet des vagues de chaleur s'est mis en place malgré la présence d'écrits scientifiques (Lagadec, 2004). Une autre canicule en 1983, limitée à la région de Marseille, avait occasionné plus de 300 décès et donné lieu à publication dans la littérature médicale (Thirion, 1992 ;San Marco et Debensason, 2004).…”