Deadly heatwaves force an ageing France to confront a hotter future

In nearly 25 years as a funeral director, Gautier Caton has never experienced anything like France’s record-breaking late-June heatwave, when he rented five refrigerated containers to store bodies arriving at up to three times the normal rate.

A fifth-generation undertaker who grew up with coffins stacked in his parents’ garage, Caton joined the family firm just weeks after an infamous 2003 heatwave that contributed to nearly 15,000 excess deaths across France. But this year, in a first, his...