Twenty years later, the summer of 2003 remains “the reference heat wave in France”, confirms Matthieu Sorel, climatologist at Météo-France. Even if the episodes of strong heat are increasing, none for the moment has reached the intensity, duration and mortality of that which occurred in France and throughout Europe that year.
The difference is that today, the question is no longer how to avoid heat waves but how to adapt to them. To achieve this, the citizen can legitimately think that the public authorities have learned the lessons of the past. The filmmaker went to meet the professionals then on the front line: firefighters, hospitalists, climatologists and farmers. As he had done for AZF. At the heart of chaos, an excellent documentary broadcast in 2021 on the explosion of the chemical plant near Toulouse on September 21, 2001.
In the front row, Evelyne Dhéliat, popular weather presenter, embodies the powerlessness of the time, unable to predict the return of cool weather. “You have to imagine Europe under a bell, invisible, inside which the winds no longer circulate”, explains Matthieu Sorel, calm and fascinating at the same time. Including to recognize, later, that the impact on biodiversity has been totally underestimated.
“Neither used nor prepared”
In the services of the Paris SAMU, “we were neither used to nor prepared”, recalls Doctor Pierre Carli. When on August 4, by 43°C in the shade, he was faced with cases of unexplained convulsions, he understood that it was not heat stroke: “At 43°C, you are in the process of bake. The health system is taken aback. Hospitals are mostly not air-conditioned, they lack beds and nurses – already!
Already, again, the emergency doctor Patrick Pelloux alerts the JT: “In four days, there have been around fifty deaths due to the heat and the public authorities do not realize the extent of the phenomenon. »
A large part of the film is devoted to the fight against fires, including the one, several days out of control, of La Motte, in the Var, retraced with the help of archives and the stories of Colonel Pierre Schaller, Eric Grohin, Chief of Firefighters, and Grégory Allione, Director of the National School of Fire Officers.
The heatwave ends on August 16. The movie continues. It will take time to realize the extent, particularly in terms of the number of deaths, of the heat wave: “70,000 additional deaths in Europe, including 15,000 in France. “As for the lessons to be drawn from it… The deputy mayor of Lucéram (Alpes-Maritimes), Jean-Louis Dalloni, returns with emotion to the delicate rescue of the isolated farm of Emile Tihy, succeeded thanks to the exceptional mobilization of all the inhabitants, who fought the fire for three days, equipped with simple buckets but united.
