PARIS, Aug 30: “Do they realize that we’re facing the most important human catastrophe that France has had to confront since World War II?,” asks Pascal Champvert, a spokesman for the French association of retirement home directors.

“Imagine,” he says, “the heat wave, because of the government’s lack of preparedness, took 14,000 lives, more than four times than were killed on Sept 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center!”

Given a major scandal in the making that could lead in the coming weeks to a major reshuffle of the French government, the country’s authorities have decided to call in some of America’s leading specialists on heat waves, among them Michael McGeehin, director of the environmental effects division of the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia.

Although the presence of Mr McGeehin and his two collaborators, flown in to Paris, is said to be linked with the preparation of a plan to make it impossible in the future for such a catastrophe to reoccur, French health officials are reportedly more interested in coming up with a professional explanation.