Fire bomber planes battle Fointaineblue forest blaze near Paris | Wildfires
French authorities sent two firefighting planes to the Paris region on Sunday after a “very severe” fire of “extraordinary scale” broke out in the vast Fontainebleau forest, about 60 km (40 miles) southeast of the capital.
The fire started late in the afternoon in the once royal hunting reserve, which today is dotted with quiet villages. It had raced across 800 hectares (2,000 acres) and was still spreading early Monday, causing the partial closure of the A6 motorway, the country’s main north-south artery, and disrupting traffic over the intense, heatwave-affected summer travel weekend, authorities said.
There were also disruptions in the high-speed railway. French railway company SNCF said there were delays of up to six hours on trains arriving at or departing from Paris Gare de Lyon on Sunday evening.
Firefighting aircraft were forced to suspend operations at dusk on Sunday. The local Seine-et-Marne fire department said about 15 homes were evacuated in the village of Vaudoue and firefighters were protecting many other towns in the area.
Olivier Compta, who oversaw the firefighting operation, said that if it were not for firefighting planes, other villages would have been evacuated long ago.
Nearly 400 firefighters worked to control the fire, which broke out two days before the national holiday of Bastille Day on July 14.
Eric Brocardi of France’s national firefighters’ federation said it was the first time firebombing planes had been sent from the normally drier and warmer south of the country to extinguish fires in the Paris region.
Two firefighting helicopters and an observation plane also helped fight the fire, the official added. “The goal is to save life and property,” he said as the fire progressed.
Firefighters had previously battled a blaze that blocked the highway east from Paris and disrupted a high-speed train line to the south of France.
The Paris region and much of the rest of France have been sharing a series of heat waves since May, with temperature records broken in many countries across Europe and causing thousands of excess deaths, according to forecasts in Belgium, Britain, France and Spain. Several other European countries faced record-breaking average temperatures.
The group of scientists at World Weather Attribution said June heatwaves would have been “almost impossible” without climate change.
Interior minister Laurent Nunez, who announced from his office on Monday that he would visit Fontainebleau, said forest fires have already consumed 17,000 hectares of land this year. He added that when all the figures are counted, this will reach 25,000 hectares, or “twice as much as the same period” in 2025.
With Agence France-Presse
