A one and a half year old child died in Marseille, in southeastern France, after being forgotten in a parked vehicle. The tragic incident occurred during the intense heat wave that is ravaging French territory, with the baby being located in the parking lot of a hospital unit.
Emergency teams in Marseille, the second largest French city, received the call on Tuesday (23) at around 2pm local time, shortly after the child was discovered. Despite rapid referral to the hospital’s pediatric emergency department, the little victim did not survive. On days of high temperatures, a car cabin can reach lethal levels within minutes, with an increase of up to 20°C in just ten minutes, even with windows partially open, making the situation unsustainable for a child’s organism.
This is not the first recent fatality involving children in France under adverse weather conditions. Previously, on Monday (22), two brothers, aged two and four, were found dead inside the family car in Carpentras. Almost in the same period, on Thursday (24), a three-year-old child also lost her life in similar circumstances, inside a car in Saint-Gratien, a town northwest of Paris.
The country has been facing record temperatures, and the current heat wave has already killed at least 50 people across the territory. This situation of extreme heat, which has been affecting Europe for a week, is seen by experts as a direct consequence of global climate change, intensifying the frequency and severity of such events.