{"id":514656,"date":"2026-06-23T17:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/514656\/"},"modified":"2026-06-23T17:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:00:11","slug":"forty-drown-in-france-as-heatwave-sweeps-across-europe-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/514656\/","title":{"rendered":"Forty drown in France as heatwave sweeps across Europe \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forty people have drowned while swimming in unsupervised areas across France<\/a> in recent days, the prime minister has said, as a record-breaking heatwave<\/a> sweeps across much of Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a tragic scourge of drownings,\u201d S\u00e9bastien Lecornu said on Tuesday. \u201cThe latest figures we\u2019ve received are 40 deaths since June 18th. Most of the victims are young people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lecornu was preparing to chair a crisis meeting with ministers to address the ferocious early summer heatwave that has left parts of western France bracing for temperatures of up to 43 degrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re experiencing an episode of exceptional intensity,\u201d Lecornu said. \u201cEvery day and every night, local and national temperature records are being broken.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heat was believed to be linked to the deaths of two young children in their family car on Monday. First responders were unable to resuscitate two children, aged two and four, who were found unconscious \u200cby \u200ctheir mother \u200bin the family car outside their home, said a prosecutor in Carpentras, southeast France.<\/p>\n

The national weather service, M\u00e9t\u00e9o-France, said on Tuesday that 54 departments had been placed under a red heatwave alert as \u201coppressive and exhausting\u201d heat smothered about half of the country. It said overnight temperatures were the hottest since record-keeping began in 1947.<\/p>\n

\"AA pharmacy sign displays the temperature in Beziers, southern France. Photograph: Gabriel Bouys\/AFP\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

Early on Tuesday, France\u2019s national heat index, an average of the day and night-time highs measured at 30 weather stations across France, reached a record 21.6 degrees, according to preliminary figures. The previous record of 21.4 degrees was set on July 25th, 2019.<\/p>\n

Officials in the greater Paris region advised people to work from home as much as possible and avoid rail journeys. \u201cThe transport network comes under severe strain in periods of extreme heat … railways cannot withstand temperatures above 50 degrees,\u201d the head of the \u00cele-de-France region, Val\u00e9rie P\u00e9cresse, told journalists.<\/p>\n

Temperatures on Monday forced the closure of about 1,350 schools in France. The conditions are forecast to continue until the end of the week.<\/p>\n

\u201cFurther record-breaking temperatures are expected, including some that could surpass all previous records, regardless of the time of year,\u201d M\u00e9t\u00e9o-France said.<\/p>\n

The sweltering temperatures extending across swathes of Europe are caused by what Clair Barnes, a climate scientist at Imperial College London, described as a bulging mass of hot air.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s drawing warm air up from North Africa, from the Sahara, and that\u2019s why we have this really intense heat,\u201d Barnes told Reuters. \u201cIt\u2019s very slow moving and it means there\u2019s kind of no wind, \u200cno breeze for respite.\u201d<\/p>\n

In England<\/a>, some schools closed early on Tuesday as the UK braced for the heatwave to set new records. With temperatures expected to rise to 40 degrees, the Met Office issued its second ever red heat warning. <\/p>\n

The UN secretary general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, said in an address to a London Climate Action Week event on Tuesday: \u201cLondon isn\u2019t just calling. It\u2019s cooking.\u201d <\/p>\n

He urged the world to work towards limiting global warming. \u201cA climate crisis is pushing us deeper towards higher temperatures and closer to catastrophic tipping points, and an energy crisis is exposing the folly of a world hooked on hydrocarbons,\u201d he said. \u201cOn the surface, these crises may seem separate, but they share the same destructive origin: fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Italy<\/a>, the health minister declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome. In Germany<\/a>, officials said swimming accidents had spiked over the weekend, leading to the deaths of five people.<\/p>\n

Nearly all of Spain<\/a> was under a heat alert on Tuesday, with red alerts warning of \u201cextraordinary danger\u201d issued for areas around the southern city of C\u00f3rdoba, the northern city of Bilbao and parts of the northern region of Cantabria.<\/p>\n

On Monday, 101 of the 828 weather stations across Spain recorded temperatures of 40 degrees or higher. At about 30 stations, temperatures remained above 25 degrees overnight into Tuesday, underlining the intensity of the heatwave.<\/p>\n

The situation was more severe in the south-eastern province of Almer\u00eda, where temperatures had not dipped below 30 degrees overnight for three consecutive nights.<\/p>\n

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