Haut-Rhin. Amaelles' heatwave reservists back on deck

Sabine Klein, a heatwave reservist for Amaelles for over four years in the Mulhouse region, is well-versed. On the morning of Tuesday, August 12, she received a list of around ten elderly and/or disabled people to contact to ensure they stay cool and to remind them of basic advice. By the afternoon, she had already contacted most of these beneficiaries. "I'm lucky; I manage to reach people. I enjoy this kind of mission; I can do it from home," says the former executive secretary.

This time she dials the number of an 85-year-old woman from Rixheim, says a few words of introduction, and asks how she's doing. "I'm fine, that's nice of you!" replies her caller, whose voice is alert and who will thank her several times. They chat for a short while. "Every day, I drink two bottles of water, I keep the shutters closed all day." The octogenarian also assures that she eats refreshing foods (like cucumbers) and will be taken care of by her family the weekend of August 15. Sabine Klein can hang up without fear and move on to the next name.

Unlike some municipalities , which ask residents who wish to do so to register, the Amaelles personal care and assistance collective monitors them internally, selecting 260 people to be looked after among "the 1,400 most vulnerable." They receive visits from a home help, but not necessarily every day.

"The most worrying thing is the people who won't pick up the phone and who we'll try to reach repeatedly," notes Aurélie Altheimer, head of Dynamic Volunteering, herself a salaried reservist. This 53-person team from Amaelles includes 31 volunteers (to keep things moving quickly), as part of a system put in place since the deadly summer of 2003. "Until now, episodes like this were rare. Three years ago, there were three heatwaves in the same summer, so three major emergencies."

It should be noted that a good half of the reservists are volunteers living outside the Haut-Rhin: Metz, Carcassonne, Saint-Etienne, Paris, etc. All were informed on Friday, August 8, that a third wave of calls would be launched.

The first took place in May, as a preventative measure. The second was launched at the end of June/beginning of July during a heatwave that dragged on. The reservists are trained. The questionnaire they fill out while making their phone calls allows them to respond as best as possible to all possible scenarios. "There are people who are naturally not well," and it's not necessarily linked to the heat . At the end of June, two senior citizens found themselves in serious difficulty, and the alert was raised by a reservist via an on-call number. At the beginning of July, a new case arose.

The goal is to "avoid further visits to the emergency room," explains Aurélie Altheimer. "These are often people who don't feel thirsty and who have difficulty moving and closing their shutters. Some are incontinent, which doesn't encourage them to drink. For them, warning someone could mean being hospitalized, or perhaps not coming back..."

Sabine Klein is well aware that she makes "calls that reassure." She takes the time to listen, "sometimes for half an hour," and takes the opportunity to remind people of the emergency numbers to call if necessary.

A Heatwave Info Service hotline was also set up on Monday, August 11, by the Ministry of Health: 0 800 066 666.