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To combat the heatwave, which is raging again this Monday, August 12, the city is extending its underground cooling network. The CHU des Quinze-Vingts, where patients and caregivers suffocate as soon as it gets above 30°C, will be connected in October to this system, which is much less energy-intensive than traditional air conditioning.
At the emergency reception, a nurse blows her hair up “Oh my, I’m so hot!” In mid-July, less than a month before the new heatwave that is hitting France these days, the heat is beginning to beat down on the faded facade of the Quinze-Vingts hospital, in the 12th arrondissement of Paris. Outside, the thermometer reads 30°C. Inside, it is barely colder and the patients sweat in silence. “It’s not air-conditioned here, but the consultation rooms are.”reassure the switchboard operators, glued to a fan.
Some 300,000 patients are treated each year in this university hospital specializing in ophthalmology. A flow that is more difficult to manage in summer, when the heatwave heats up tempers. At certain times, consultation rooms that are too exposed to the sun have to be moved. Even the nine operating theaters struggle to be kept at 20°C. For a long time, the team has weathered heat waves in this thermal sieve built in the 1960s, but how can they cope when Paris regularly experiences 50°C in the shade?
In his office without air conditioning, the hospital’s interim general director, Nils Avanturier, receives guests in a suit. A fan sleeps in a corner of the room. “We have complaints from patients and caregivers who say it is unfair.
