Well, actually most of them died because apparently normally the hottest it
gets there is around 70 or something, and so they don't have a real need for
air conditioning, ergo in the heat with no AC they basically get heat
exhaustion and their bodies just shut down.... Just the technical
version....

I started thinking something odd was going on in
alt.games.half-life when one foggy november evening Cannon Fodder
<gonfishn@airmail.net> came into my office and told me:

I would suspect in Houston when there is no electricity the social
and health system goes into overdrive immediately. Not so with a
heatwave in July in France.

It's a very peculiar thing that France pretty much slows to a
standstill in July / August - everything runs at half or less
capacity except in the coastal resorts.

This means that all the social things (family off on holiday, social
groups not happening, welfare system on holiday) that keep an eye on
solitary elderly vanish and therefore nobody is there to notice if
they go in dehydration... then when someone notices and brings them
to the hospital, there's only half the staff there if that... (at
least for the first ten days, after that emergency measures did kick
in).

Result? lots of people dying when it could have been avoided