France records around 1,000 additional deaths amid extreme heat wave leading to European records
France saw around 1,000 additional deaths last week at the height of its record-smashing heat wave, the country’s public health agency said on Sunday (June
France saw around 1,000 additional deaths last week at the height of its record-smashing heat wave, the country’s public health agency said on Sunday (June 28, 2026), as Europeans elsewhere were suffering through yet another day of new temperature highs that sparked wildfires in Germany and had Berlin police using water cannons to cool down the crowds. Temperature records were toppled in several countries on the weekend as the heat wave slowly moved toward eastern parts of the continent. In Germany, a new nighttime temperature record was reported on Sunday (June 28, 2026) from Kubschütz, in eastern Saxony, where the temperature did not drop below 29.4 degrees Celsius (84.9 Fahrenheit). The nightly record came only hours after a daytime record of 41.5 C (106.7 F) in Möckern-Drewitz in Saxony-Anhalt, according to preliminary data by the German Weather Service DWD. The previous record was set a day earlier. A new study from the World Weather Attribution, a Europe-based collaboration of scientists, reported on Friday (June 26, 2026) that the record-breaking heat and humidity in Europe this week would not have been possible without climate change. The rapid study found that the heat would have been virtually impossible just five decades ago, and is 200 times more likely today than it would have been 20 years ago.
France saw a surge in deaths last week at the height of its record-smashing heat wave, including a sharp increase in calls to private homes, especially in the Paris region, the national public health agency said on Sunday (June 28, 2026). There were more than 1,200 deaths on Wednesday (June 24, 2026), when France was sweltering under its hottest temperatures ever, increasing to more than 1,400 deaths on each of the two following days, Public Health France said. In April and May, before the heat wave, France’s rate of deaths was about 900 to 1,000 per day, it said. The agency concluded that France experienced a total of at least 1,000 additional deaths during those three days alone, an estimate it cautioned is likely to increase as more data is collected, including for deaths at home. The increase in deaths was sharpest in areas under red warnings of extreme heat, it said. Those warnings blanketed about three-quarters of the country at the peak of the heat wave. The agency said that 85% of the deaths involved people aged 65 and above. In Gohrischheide, eastern Germany, a fire broke out in a large forest that’s still contaminated with World War II-era ammunition, making firefighters’ efforts to put out the flames even more dangerous and complicated.
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