re: I'm from Belgium
In Belgium, newspapers had warned that the death toll could climb, before the heat wave occured and very few deaths occured directly because of it.
In France, the problem was mainly in the Paris area and comes from the heavily centralized system they have.
They have all kinds of plans in case of emergencies like fire, floods, extreme cold, oil spills, earthquakes, but the heat wave's intensity was such that they were not prepared for it.
We don't have many air conditiorning systems and it might change.
Raoul