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The number sounds high to me--that's a lot of dead people. But when you look at the numbers like this...
About 525 people died in Chicago in 1995 (Univ. of Illinois)...from what I recall, almost all (if not all) the deaths occurred within the city limits. With a population of about 2.8 million at the time, that's 1 death for every 5600 residents.
The entire nation of France seemed to get beat down by this heat wave. Going with 13,000 dead (as I said, this sounds a bit high to me at this point) and a population of roughly 59.2 million in France (US State Dept.), that's 1 death for every 4553 residents. Knock that number down to 10,000 and it goes down to 1 death for every 5920 residents.
Just on this alone, it seems plausible that there could have been this many heat-related deaths...but like gossard said, it's all in the labeling: I would imagine a good number of deaths were due to heart and lung ailments and dehydration.
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