Taking the heat  

The IHT has an interesting article on the French reaction to the heat wave by Eric Klinenberg, the author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Klinenberg draws some parallels between the two catastrophes in terms of public policy breakdowns, but uses the political fallout to illustrate an important difference between French and American politics - or at least, Chicago politics:

Yet the French and American responses to the heat crises have not been identical. Dr. Abenhaïm resigned because French political culture demands governmental accountability for failed policy programs, and because French journalists aggressively documented the ways that the state neglected to protect the vulnerable. In the United States, however, no federal officials faced criticism after the deadly American heat wave of 1995. Chicago leaders made it through the crisis unscathed, too. One group of activists and advocates for the elderly demanded that the mayor's office accept responsibility for the crisis. Yet a leading newspaper columnist trivialized their claims, writing that "trying to blame the mayor for an act of God is not only unfair, it also does an injustice by wrongfully framing the debate."