The Slow Burn

AUG. 4 The first records are broken in the southwest, where temperatures reach 41C in the Bordeaux region and on the Atlantic coast.

AUG. 10 Patrick Pelloux, head of France's emergency physicians' association, announces that some 50 people have died of heat-related illnesses in the Paris region in the past four days. He criticizes the General Directorate for Health for characterizing the deaths as natural .

AUG. 12 Pelloux says some 100 people across France have died from the...