A major wildfire has burned through more than 1,900 hectares of the Fontainebleau forest, a sprawling former royal hunting estate and UNESCO biosphere reserve approximately 60 kilometres southeast of Paris, in what officials have described as a blaze of "exceptional scale." The fire broke out on Sunday afternoon and spread rapidly under heatwave conditions, with a second fire igniting on Monday afternoon and consuming a further 100 hectares. Around 1,000 residents in and around the town of Fontainebleau were evacuated, and horses were rescued from a nearby equestrian centre as flames approached.
The emergency response has been unprecedented for the greater Paris region. Four Canadair water-bombing aircraft — a first for the area — along with two Dash planes, three helicopters and an observation aircraft were deployed, carrying out 187 water drops. Some 600 firefighters remained on the ground overnight on Monday, working in shifts to battle a blaze that commanders said was "still spreading" due to unfavourable weather conditions. The A6 motorway leading southeast out of Paris was shut, and rail services connecting the capital to Lyon were disrupted before engineers repaired cables damaged by the fire. Local residents pitched in where they could: farmers used tractors to haul water cisterns toward the flames, and one nurse returned to her evacuated home to give firefighters access to her swimming pool.
Authorities are investigating whether the fire was deliberately set. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez cited around ten separate ignition points within a perimeter of 1,000 metres as grounds for suspicion. Police arrested two people on Monday in connection with the blaze, including an 18-year-old man found with soot-covered hands and a lighter. In total, 59 people were arrested across France over the weekend on suspicion of deliberate or accidental arson.
The Fontainebleau fire is the most dramatic but not the only blaze to strike the country this summer. France is enduring its third heatwave in under three months, and since the start of the year wildfires have scorched roughly 25,000 hectares nationally — nearly twice the area burned during the same period last year. The country recorded more than 2,000 excess deaths during a June heatwave and 300 during high temperatures in late May. President Emmanuel Macron described the Fontainebleau blaze as "exceptionally large" and confirmed all available resources had been mobilised.
The fires come amid a broader pattern of extreme summer weather across Europe, with temperature records broken in multiple countries this year. Scientists have linked the increasing frequency of such events to man-made climate change. One evacuated resident, a 45-year-old nurse, captured a widely shared sentiment: "With global warming, it was to be expected," she said of a wildfire so far north of France's traditionally fire-prone southern regions. Temperatures were forecast to remain elevated through Bastille Day on Tuesday, France's national holiday, leaving firefighters with little immediate respite.