Firefighting aircraft joined efforts for a second day on Monday to contain a major wildfire in the Fontainebleau forest south of Paris, after authorities said the blaze may have been deliberately started. The fire forced evacuations, disrupted transport links and spread as France endured another heatwave, says AFP.
The blaze broke out on Sunday in the vast Fontainebleau forest, around 60 kilometres southeast of the capital, a former royal hunting ground now surrounded by small villages. By early Monday, flames had consumed about 800 hectares of woodland, an area larger than Gibraltar.
“I have never seen this before” in three decades, Didier Buguinet, deputy mayor of Le Vaudoue, said as flames approached the edge of the village, home to around 750 residents. “We’re going to weep for our forest,” he added.
Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said investigators were examining whether the fire was an act of arson, pointing to several separate ignition points. “There were about 10 fire ignition points within a perimeter of 1,000 metres, which suggests that it could have been deliberately set,” Nunez said.
The fire is an unusual event for northern France, where wildfires are less common than in the country’s southern regions. Authorities deployed aircraft to the Paris area for the first time to support ground crews battling the flames.
Two Canadair firefighting planes joined operations on Monday, collecting water from the Seine river before dropping it over burning areas. Fire engines moved through narrow forest tracks as thick grey smoke rose above the woodland.
Local farmers also helped emergency services by using tractors to transport water tanks and directing hoses towards affected areas. The wildfire disrupted the A6 motorway, a major route connecting Paris with southeastern France, with parts of the highway remaining closed on Monday, according to Google Maps.
Rail services were also affected after cables were damaged by the fire on Sunday. National railway operator SNCF said repairs had been completed, allowing high-speed trains between Paris and Lyon to return to normal operations.
Sophie Guiot, a local resident, showed AFP a photograph of a water-dropping aircraft flying above her home. “My parents in the south of the country had been worrying about fires, but it’s here that it happened,” she said.
France has faced a series of extreme weather events in recent months, with scientists linking the growing frequency and intensity of such episodes to human-caused climate change. The country recorded more than 2,000 excess deaths during a heatwave in June and another 300 during a period of extreme temperatures in late May, according to official figures.
Since the beginning of the year, wildfires have burned around 25,000 hectares of land across France, nearly the size of Edinburgh and twice the area affected during the same period last year, civil security director general Julien Marion said on Friday.
Temperatures were forecast to remain elevated through France’s national holiday on Tuesday, according to the national weather service Meteo-France.
