A three-year-old boy has died after becoming trapped in a hot car in the Paris suburbs, the third such fatality of a child in France this week. The boy slipped into the family vehicle while his father thought he was napping, then found himself unable to get out with the child lock engaged, the local prosecutor said. Civil defense confirmed the death in the town of Saint-Gratien, in the Val-d’Oise north of Paris, on Thursday evening, June 25.
The death came on a day when France recorded its hottest day since measurements began in 1947, with a national average temperature reaching 30°C and Paris hitting 40.3°C. Around 63 million people were set to swelter in temperatures above 30°C on Thursday, after the country experienced its hottest night on record. The heatwave’s wider toll is still being counted, and the boy in Saint-Gratien has become its most visible casualty.
The 45 Minutes in Saint-Gratien
At least 45 minutes passed between the moment the boy’s father told him to have a nap and the moment the parents found him unconscious in the car, according to the 45-minute gap the prosecutor described. The boy climbed into the family vehicle, whose doors were not locked, but the child safety system was activated and he could not open them from inside. The mother was napping with the couple’s second child, an 18-month-old, while the father worked in a shed at the bottom of the garden, Le Bras said. The boy was found unconscious by his parents, who called emergency services, but he could not be resuscitated.
He then apparently shut himself in and became trapped in the vehicle before being found unconscious by his parents.
The quote came from public prosecutor Guirec Le Bras, speaking in Pontoise on Thursday afternoon, after a police source and civil defense had independently reported the death. The boy’s mother was taken to hospital in a state of shock, the prosecutor added. The boy could not be revived despite the efforts of his parents and the emergency services who arrived at the home.
The death was the third such fatality of a child in a vehicle in France in four days, following the deaths of two children in Carpentras. Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire said on Thursday that deaths were on the rise in the capital, without giving a specific figure. The heatwave that started last week has put a country without widespread air conditioning under pressure, with the French health minister visiting a Paris hospital on Monday to urge people to check on elderly and vulnerable neighbours. The boy’s death in Saint-Gratien was the first in the Paris region, with the Carpentras case in southeastern France.
Two Children, Three Days Earlier in Carpentras
The Carpentras deaths happened three days earlier, in a residential parking lot in the southeastern town of Carpentras in the Vaucluse département, according to the Carpentras prosecutor’s account of the two earlier deaths. The bodies of two children were found inside the family car by emergency services, the prosecutor said. Hélène Mourges, the prosecutor in Carpentras, told AFP that the heat was the leading line of inquiry, with the temperature in the town expected to exceed 39°C that afternoon. The causes of death had not been determined as of the initial findings, Mourges said.
The two cases are the confirmed child-in-car fatalities of this heatwave reported so far. Both happened in parked family vehicles during the hottest hours of the day, in towns separated by roughly 700 kilometres of French highway. In Saint-Gratien, the child climbed into the car; in Carpentras, the children were already inside when the heat reached them. The French Health Ministry has activated its national Heatwave Information Service hotline, Canicule Info Service, free on 0800 06 66 66, to advise families on coping with extreme heat.
| Location | Date | Ages | Investigation status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saint-Gratien, Val-d’Oise (Paris region) | Thursday June 25 | 3 years old | Prosecutor Guirec Le Bras cited initial findings; cause of death under investigation |
| Carpentras, Vaucluse (southeastern France) | Monday June 22 | 2 and 4 years old | Prosecutor Hélène Mourges said heat is the leading line of inquiry |
France’s Hottest Day Since Records Began
France recorded its hottest day since measurements began in 1947 on Wednesday, June 24, with the national average temperature reaching 30°C, according to Météo-France. The capital hit 40.3°C the same day, the fourth time in 150 years that Paris has topped 40°C, the forecaster said. In Les Herbiers in the southwest, temperatures reached 43°C on Tuesday, the same forecaster said, and Bordeaux and Poitiers both smashed their previous records. The national temperature indicator, an average of daytime and nighttime readings at 30 stations, reached 29.8°C for the Monday to Tuesday period, Météo-France said, citing provisional data.
- National average temperature on Wednesday: 30°C (Météo-France, via Le Monde)
- Paris peak on Wednesday: 40.3°C
- Les Herbiers peak on Tuesday: 43°C
- People in temperatures above 30°C on Thursday: 63 million
- Departments on level 1 danger-to-life alert on Monday: 49 of 96
The forecaster placed 49 of France’s 96 mainland departments on a level 1 danger-to-life warning on Monday, urging 35 million people to exercise “absolute vigilance” and avoid strenuous exertion and direct sun, as the Météo-France forecast and the 49-department danger-to-life warning detailed. A further six departments moved to the red list on Tuesday, with 35 others remaining on the level 2 orange alert. By Thursday, 54 areas of France were under red heatwave alert, Al Jazeera reported, and around 63 million people were set to swelter in temperatures above 30°C.
The heat is being driven by an Omega block, a slow-moving weather pattern named for its resemblance to the Greek letter, that has trapped a bulge of hot air over the continent while cooler air sits on either side. “It’s drawing warm air up from North Africa, from the Sahara, and that’s why we have this really intense heat. It’s very slow moving, and it means there’s kind of no wind, no breeze for respite,” Clair Barnes, a research associate in extreme weather and climate at Imperial College London, told Reuters. The same weather pattern has produced extremes further east, with temperatures past 42°C in parts of Egypt this month, as the wider regional heat pattern across the Middle East showed.
40 Drownings, Closed Schools, Museums Pull Hours
The wider toll from the heatwave is being counted in different ways across France. Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, after a crisis meeting on Tuesday, called the fatalities a “tragic scourge,” telling reporters the dead “are the first victims of the crisis we are facing.” Sports Minister Marina Ferrari told France Inter radio that to go swimming in unauthorised areas during a heatwave “is not something to take lightly.”
At least 40 people have drowned in France since Thursday June 18, mainly young people, as the Prime Minister Lecornu’s “tragic scourge” remarks after the crisis meeting confirmed. The drownings come alongside the deaths of three elderly people, aged between 80 and 95, near Bordeaux over the weekend, who died from health problems caused by the extreme temperatures, local official Sophie Brocas told France TV. The Louvre, the world’s most visited museum, said it would close two hours early at 4pm local time from Wednesday to Saturday because the heat had made “visiting and working conditions difficult during the hottest hours of the day,” and the Eiffel Tower closed at 4pm on Tuesday.
- At least 40 drownings in France since Thursday June 18, mainly young people (Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu, via Al Jazeera)
- 54 areas of France under red heatwave alert by Thursday (Al Jazeera)
- Louvre closing at 4pm from Wednesday to Saturday; Eiffel Tower closed at 4pm on Tuesday (Al Jazeera)
- 1,300 schools closed nationwide on Monday, with 4,000 more rescheduling classes (The Guardian)
- Three people aged 80-95 died near Bordeaux over the weekend (The Guardian)
- An elderly British woman died at the Baie d’Aunis campsite in La Tranche-sur-Mer, Vendée (Connexion France)
The school system has also been disrupted, with more than 1,300 schools closed nationwide on Monday and another 4,000 rescheduling classes to allow pupils to leave early. One in three homes in France is not adapted to extreme heat, the government says, a structural gap visible in the temperatures recorded this week. The elderly British woman who died at a Vendée campsite, an elderly traveller who fell ill at the Baie d’Aunis in La Tranche-sur-Mer while staying with her husband, with four ambulances and two police units dispatched to the scene, is one of the foreign visitors reported to have died in the heatwave. The death has not been officially linked to the heat, with local staff indicating natural causes as the preliminary finding.
An Infrastructure Built Without Air Conditioning
The heat has strained a country without widespread air conditioning. One in three homes in France is not adapted to extreme heat, the government says, a gap visible in the overwhelmed hospitals, idled schools and shortened museum hours of the past week. The French Health Ministry has urged families to drink water regularly, avoid alcohol, keep homes cool and limit physical exertion during the hottest hours of the day.
Paris Mayor Emmanuel Grégoire said on Thursday that deaths were on the rise in the capital, without giving a specific figure. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned that the next few days posed “serious health risks” for Europe, with Mary Friel, the IFRC’s senior climate policy officer, telling a press conference in Geneva that “for thousands of people across Europe, extreme temperatures, without action, can quickly become a matter of life and death.” The heatwave has spilled across borders, with Spain declaring its first official heatwave of the year from Sunday until Wednesday, with temperatures forecast to reach 44°C in some areas and the northern Basque city of San Sebastián expected to hit 40°C, more than double the seasonal average. Italy issued heatwave red alerts for 12 cities on Monday, including Milan, Turin, Venice, Bologna, Florence and Rome, while the UK Met Office issued an “extreme heat” warning for much of southern England and parts of Wales until Thursday, predicting temperatures of up to 39°C.
France went ahead with its annual Fête de la Musique street music festival on Sunday, although some local authorities cancelled it and others ran only evening events. Alcohol restrictions were imposed in many areas, and one in 10 regional train services around Paris were cancelled amid fears for rolling stock and tracks. The Berlin Open tennis tournament final was suspended in Germany as severe thunderstorms broke the heat, a sign that the same Omega block trapping hot air over the continent is also destabilising the weather at its edges.
The heat has tested a health system that the health minister, Stéphanie Rist, asked the public to back on Monday, when she urged people to check on elderly and vulnerable neighbours. “Many people are going to suffer, because bodies suffer from an accumulation of high temperatures,” Rist said during a visit to a Paris hospital. She later told French television: “We’re heading for, at the very least, several days of very, very hot weather. We really don’t know when temperatures will start falling.” The French Health Ministry has urged people to drink water regularly, avoid alcohol, keep homes cool and limit physical exertion during the hottest hours of the day.
The 2003 Heatwave as Reference Point
Forecasters have warned that the heatwave that started last week could rival the 2003 episode of extreme heat that claimed nearly 15,000 lives nationwide. France recorded its hottest day since 1947 this week, and the daytime peaks and the speed at which the heat arrived have surprised the forecasters. The national heat index hit its highest level for June on Monday, Météo-France said, with night-time lows of about 25°C recorded in several towns and cities overnight on Sunday already setting all-time records. Météo-France has said that “Thursday will once again be a sweltering day, with temperatures remaining just as high” and that “on Friday, a gradual drop is expected to begin from the Atlantic coast.”
The gradual drop, when it comes, will be the first sustained relief since the heatwave began. Until then, the French Health Ministry’s Canicule Info Service hotline will remain open daily from 9am to 7pm, and the public is being asked to check on elderly neighbours, avoid alcohol and stay out of the sun. The boy in Saint-Gratien, whose parents and firefighters could not revive him, is what the next few days are still forecast to bring.
