France suffers major power outage as Europe wilts from heatwave

PARIS (AFP) — Temperatures climbed across Europe again on Wednesday, as a record-breaking heatwave left tens of thousands of people without power and boosted air conditioner sales on a continent unused and ill-equipped to handle searing heat.

The extreme weather is being driven by atmospheric patterns that keep hot air trapped in place for days, with these factors worsened by global warming, experts say.

France’s national temperature indicator — an average of daytime and nighttime temperatures across 30 stations — reached 29.8C on Tuesday, the hottest since measurements began in 1947.

With four more French departments being put under the highest heat alert category Wednesday, around 44 million people are affected, according to Agence France-Presse calculations.

Added to the 31 departments currently on orange alert, more than 90 percent of the French population is exposed to extreme heat, with temperatures of 39C to 41C expected on Wednesday from Brittany in the northwest to the Paris region, and in much of the southwest.

The heatwave caused the country’s first major power outage of the latest bout of extreme weather, after a heat-related incident with a transformer left around 68,000 households on Wednesday without electricity in the northwestern Finistere department, the authorities said.

While teams worked through the night to fix the issue, which took place late Tuesday, power is not expected to be restored in full until the end of Wednesday at the earliest.

Up to 106,000 clients were left without power by late Tuesday.

Sales of fans and air conditioners skyrocketed in a country where most buildings are not designed to cope with extreme heat.

On Monday, hypermarket operator Carrefour had sold 30,000 units by 6:30 p.m. — “a thousand times more than on a normal day,” CEO Alexandre Bompard said.