France sends firefighting planes to Paris region as wildfire spreads near Fontainebleau

France dispatched two firefighting aircraft to the Paris region as a wildfire in the Fontainebleau forest, about 60 kilometres south-east of Paris, expanded to roughly 800 hectares by early Monday. Officials described the blaze as “very virulent” and of “exceptional scale” after it broke out late Sunday in the sprawling former royal hunting preserve, now ringed by villages.

The fire forced around 15 homes to be evacuated in Vaudoue, while about 400 firefighters worked to hold the flames back from nearby towns. The A6 motorway was partially closed and traffic on the high-speed rail line to south-eastern France was disrupted, adding pressure to a transport network already strained by the start of the summer travel period. Aircraft operations were suspended at nightfall.

The decision to send planes into the Paris region marked a striking operational shift for France, which normally relies on firefighting aircraft in the country’s hotter southern zones. The redeployment underlined how quickly wildfire risk is moving into places once treated as comparatively safer, even around the capital.

The timing sharpened the impact. The fire came just ahead of the July 14 national holiday and the first major weekend of summer departures, when roads and rail lines are packed with holiday travellers. In a country where the north has long been seen as less exposed than the Mediterranean fringe, the blaze around Fontainebleau became an immediate test of whether emergency resources can be stretched far enough when fires break out beyond the traditional front lines.

The Paris-region fire was part of a broader surge in wildfire activity across France in July. Earlier in the month, nearly 3,000 people were evacuated in southwestern France, where another blaze burned about 4,600 hectares and injured 16 people. The European Union sent four waterbombing aircraft from Cyprus and Sweden to help there, a sign of how quickly national and European resources are being pulled into service as repeated heatwaves intensify fire conditions across southern Europe.