After the heatwave

Date: 23/08/03

As the death toll rose, so did the political heat, and the recriminations

AFTER the heatwave, the mudbath. Literally, in parts of southern France, northern Italy and Spain, where heat gave way to floods. Politically too, in several countries, where critics are now pelting the authorities with charges that they were slow to notice the effects of the heat, and ill-prepared to react to them.

This storm hit France early on. The closure of hospital wards and departure of doctors on holiday left the health system unable to cope with the huge influx of elderly and infirm as temperatures soared and - the real killer - stayed up for ten days. As doctors still at work talked of a crisis, the health ministry at first denied it, then admitted one, then, as morgues bulged and undertakers worked overtime, by this week were ready to accept that the heat may have caused 5,000 deaths.

The director of public health resigned, and, with the government by Thursday ready to talk of 10,000 deaths, the minister too, Jean-François Mattei, was at risk. His first reaction had been a television interview showing him, in a T-shirt in the garden of his holiday home in the Var, arguing, unworried, that all was under control. Only days later did he rush back to Paris. His first action was an emergency telephone advice service; coinciding with the first reports of hundreds of deaths, it looked utterly inadequate. Not until the prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, returned from his holiday in Haute-Savoie, did the government launch an emergency health plan - just as the heatwave ended.

In Italy, extra deaths, notably in the baking north, were noticed by August 10th: in the first half of the month, the Turin total was 35% higher than the average of 2001 and 2002. But the row burst into full flame only over last weekend. All the fault of local government, said the health minister, Girolamo Sirchia. We haven't got the money, they hit back, you've savaged us with cuts; we need a co-ordinated plan for handling the needs of old people, and you must pay. Amid wild demands for an extra €20 billion ($22 billion), the minister was unconvinced: you can reorganise services without spending more, he said.

So? Maybe put up communal taxes, hinted the Democratic Left mayor of Florence, a move now barred by central legislation. No way, said the mayor of Rome, albeit of the same party. Mr Sirchia has proposed that he, the mayors and regional authorities get together soon. If it happens, he can expect a rough time.

Spain too was counting up the deaths: in the first half of August, an extra 49%, compared with 2002, in Barcelona, in the north-east, for example, and 75% in Seville, far to the south. The central health ministry this week was accused of doing no more than put out health recommendations for people at risk - to which the minister, Ana Pastor, replied (from Mallorca) that, in decentralised Spain, that was all its job was. Opposition parties tried to whip up criticism against it. But the 17 regions that actually run health services seem to have done little more. And - maybe because they vary politically and the mud would fly both ways - there was notably less of it than in Italy, let alone France.

In Portugal, the issue has been the management - or lack of it - of firefighting against blazes that destroyed more than 200,000 hectares of forest and cost 18 lives. Why were only 3,000 firemen mobilised, when there are 40,000 firemen, 10,000 of them full-timers? Why could a country so vulnerable muster only six fire-fighting planes and six helicopters? The centre-right government of José Manuel Duro Barroso is accused of responding slowly to the crisis and not co-ordinating firefighting. Even one of its own parliamentary supporters told of such things in the district that he represents.

But there are deeper issues, such as the concentration on eucalyptus and pine forests, many of whose 40,000 small-scale owners fail to clear underbrush or cut fire breaks, because of the rising cost of labour. These fast-growing and easy-burning forests end as pulp and paper, and the mills are big exporters - at a price, which the Portuguese are now starting to count.

As the death toll rose in France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, so did the political heat, and the recriminations.