A wildfire of exceptional scale has burned through 1,300 hectares of the Forest of Fontainebleau south-east of Paris since Sunday afternoon, prompting the evacuation of roughly 900 homes, closing sections of the A6 motorway and disrupting rail services from Paris Gare de Lyon. By Monday evening, French authorities had arrested two people in connection with the blaze — and the interior minister went on national television to say the fire may have been started on purpose.
Laurent Nuñez, visiting the incident command post at Noisy-sur-École, told reporters that investigators had found approximately 10 separate ignition points within a perimeter of 1,000 metres. "There were about 10 fire ignition points within a perimeter of 1,000 metres, which suggests that it could have been deliberately set," he said, according to Le Monde and Le Figaro. He added that ignition points had also been identified on opposite sides of the A6 motorway, a detail that further raised investigators' suspicions.
Nuñez was careful to use conditional language. On France 2's evening news, he said the two arrests in the Fontainebleau region were for "deliberate or accidental arson" — a formulation that covers both possibilities. Arson has not been formally confirmed, and no suspect has been publicly identified. But the minister's decision to raise the possibility on camera, within 24 hours of the fire's outbreak, signals where the investigation is heading.
The fire erupted late Sunday afternoon in the sprawling forest, roughly 60 kilometres south-east of the capital. It spread rapidly, fuelled by strong winds and exceptionally dry conditions during France's third heatwave of the summer. By Monday morning, a plume of smoke was visible from 20 kilometres away, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS. President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X that "all available resources had been deployed" against what he described as a wildfire of "exceptional magnitude."
The response has been unusual for the Paris region. Water-bombing Canadair aircraft were scrambled from southern France — a deployment described by officials as unprecedented for Île-de-France. Around 400 firefighters were on the ground by Monday, and fire officials warned it could take days or weeks to bring the blaze under control. Nuñez told France 2 that the fire was "not under control" and "continuing to progress."
The Fontainebleau forest is not ordinary woodland. A 25,000-hectare massif of ancient oaks, sandstone formations and clearings, it was the creative wellspring of the Barbizon painters and a catalyst for the early French conservation movement. It is a protected Natura 2000 site. The Irish Times reported that the fire had burned through nearly a fifth of the forest's most sensitive areas.
The arrests at Fontainebleau were part of a wider enforcement sweep. Nuñez announced that 59 people had been detained across France for wildfire-related offences — deliberate or accidental — since the start of the summer. That figure had risen through the day: 32 were reported earlier on Monday, 44 by mid-afternoon, and 59 by the evening broadcast. The interior minister said 32,000 hectares had already burned across France in 2026 before the Fontainebleau blaze began.
The fire came as southern Europe faced a broader wave of extreme fires. In Spain's Almería province, at least 13 people were killed last week in what is described as the country's deadliest wildfire in more than 40 years, with 10 still unaccounted for. Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez renewed calls for a coordinated national response.
