“ All of Île-de-France’s forests are affected. And with climate change, this trend isn’t going to ease,” warned the National Office of Forests forests (ONF) in 2022. Four years later, after the fires that swept the south of France, a massive blaze has erupted in the Forest of Fontainebleau this Sunday, July 12, burning already 8,00 hectares, about 5% of the massif.
With the heat waves that have rolled in since May and the brutal drought gripping French soils, particularly in Île-de-France, even a spark can spark disaster. And Île-de-France is not immune to these blazes, which have consumed 287,000 hectares of forests. This time, the Three-Pignons sector is facing an environmental catastrophe of unprecedented scale, the largest wildfire ever recorded in Île-de-France since modern records began.
A blaze of unprecedented scale for the Paris region, crossing a critical threshold typically reserved for the great Mediterranean or Gironde fires. For comparison, the last major fire to strike the area, in the summer of 2022 at Rochefort-en-Yvelines, burned about a hundred hectares, which was already a very serious warning at the local level.
The scale of the operation is therefore substantial, as evidenced by the deployment of two Canadairs that will scoop water from the Seine between Chartrettes and Bois-le-Roi — something that had never happened before.
