The emblematic Fontainebleau forest, south-east of Paris, fell prey to a fire of “exceptional magnitude” during the night from Sunday to Monday July 13 which required the commitment of unprecedented resources in Île-de-France where rail traffic is very disrupted.
A plume of smoke floating over the forest is visible 20 km away, while fire trucks are heading to the fire via small forest roads. They receive reinforcement from farmers who stow water tanks on the back of their tractors. Despite calls from the emergency services to remain confined so as not to be exposed to the smoke, residents came out on their doorsteps to watch in amazement this ballet of emergency and police vehicles, in the acrid smoke that hovered over the area.
Four hundred firefighters are working overnight to fight this fire which, since it broke out along the highway in the afternoon, has already covered some 800 hectares in the middle of the night, said Commander Paul-Edouard Laurain, spokesperson for the departmental fire and rescue service (Sdis). Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez is expected there Monday morning.
If the firefighters are counting on the help of a drop in temperatures during the night, they are no longer supported by the two water bombing helicopters and the two planes dispatched from the south of France which dispersed retardant on the blaze, and had to interrupt their rotations at dusk.
This is the first time that such aircraft have been deployed in the Paris region. This fire, described as “very virulent” by the emergency services, will require the commitment for “one or two weeks” of firefighters who will receive reinforcements from all over France, indicated during a press briefing the sub-prefect of Fontainebleau, Yannis Bouzar.
“Save lives and property”
“The objective is to save lives and property,” declared Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Brocardi, spokesperson for the National Federation of French Firefighters. Around fifteen homes had to be evacuated in the town of Vaudoué, and several others had to be defended in the area, said the Seine-et-Marne firefighters. “Without the planes, the villages of Noisy-sur-Ecole and Vaudoué would have been evacuated, that’s a certainty,” declared Colonel Olivier Compta, who heads the rescue. Around midnight, one of the flame fronts was about a hundred meters from Le Vaudoué.
The disaster led to the interruption of traffic on a portion of the A6 motorway, just as it had been further east on the A5 due to one of the numerous stubble fires which have been mobilizing the department’s firefighters for several days. Above all, this caused very serious rail disruptions with, according to the SNCF website, delays of up to six hours for trains arriving or departing from Lyon station.
The intense heat, which has been suffocating Île-de-France in particular for several days, considerably increases the risk of fires starting, also fueled by the dryness of the soil. Everywhere in the country, emergency services had to fight against the flames: Pyrénées-Orientales, Drôme, Lot, Savoie, but also more northern sectors, such as Indre or Loire-Atlantique, demonstrating that no region is safe from these summer fires, favored by increasingly frequent episodes of heatwave.
According to Laurent Nuñez, once the results are “consolidated”, “we will be at 25,000 hectares burned” in France, or “twice more compared to the same period” of 2025. The authorities have warned that those responsible for such disasters, voluntarily or recklessly, would be subject to criminal prosecution. They will not let “anything slip through,” warned the minister, who indicated on Saturday that 32 people had been placed in police custody since the beginning of the summer.
