Fontainebleau blaze scorches 800 hectares, forces A6 highway closure as smaller fires disrupt train services
\n Paris
\nMore than 400 French firefighters worked through the night to contain a wildfire in the historic Fontainebleau forest south of Paris, and authorities sent two waterbombing planes on Monday to tackle the blaze as a heatwave gripped western Europe.
\nThe fire broke out alongside a highway near Fontainebleau, home to one of France\u2019s best-known royal palaces, which once served as a hunting lodge and autumn residence for past monarchs. By midnight, the flames had scorched more than 800 hectares (1,980 acres), fanned by hot winds.
\nJust 70 kilometres (43.5 miles) from Paris, the blaze forced the closure of the A6 highway linking Paris with Lyon and the south. Smaller fires in the area also disrupted high-speed train services.
\n\u201cThe fight continues today,\u201d the French fire service said on X. Local residents have been warned that the Canadair planes will have to scoop water from the river Seine, which flows through central Paris.
\nEuropean countries are worried about increasingly frequent heatwaves and record-breaking temperatures. Most scientists say the fires are driven by climate change, with large swathes of continental Europe parched.
\nWildfires have already ripped through regions of France, Spain, Portugal and Greece, charring thousands of hectares of land.
\nThe death toll from a blaze that swept through Spain\u2019s southeastern Almeria province rose to 13 over the weekend, when a 93-year-old British woman died of burns.
\nWestern Europe is gripped by its third prolonged spell of baking temperatures this summer. A heatwave in late June likely killed thousands of people, with countries reporting more than 10,000 excess deaths.
\nPower supplies were disrupted, schools shut and temperature records broken in France, Spain and Britain.
\n\u201cTo have this kind of excess at this time of year is unusual. It\u2019s really high,\u201d said Lasse Vestergaard, chief physician at Denmark\u2019s Statens Serum Institut, which hosts EuroMOMO, a Europe-wide mortality surveillance system. \u201cIt is difficult to explain this high excess mortality by anything but the extreme \u200bheat,\u201d Vestergaard told Reuters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fontainebleau blaze scorches 800 hectares, forces A6 highway closure as smaller fires disrupt train services Paris More than 400 French firefighters worked through the night to contain a wildfire in the historic Fontainebleau forest south of Paris, and authorities sent two waterbombing planes on Monday to tackle the blaze as a heatwave gripped western Europe. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556152,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-556131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n