The fire erupted on Sunday in the sprawling Fontainebleau Forest, about 60km southeast of the capital.<\/p>\n
The wildfire quickly spread across the forest, almost doubling in size in 24 hours, and disrupted rail and road traffic during a busy Bastille Day holiday long weekend.<\/p>\n
Throughout the day, aircraft in the skies and firefighters on the ground were trying to douse the flames.<\/p>\n
A second fire broke out on Monday afternoon and had ravaged about 100ha, forcing the evacuation of about 1000 people in and around Fontainebleau.<\/p>\n
A source said one of the two suspects arrested was an 18-year-old man.<\/p>\n
The scale of the fire led to the deployment of four Canadair aircraft – an unprecedented move in the greater Paris region – as well as two Dash planes and three water-bombing helicopters.<\/p>\n
Commander of operations Jean-Marc Sicard said 187 water drops were carried out and more than 600 firefighters remained mobilised overnight.<\/p>\n
President Emmanuel Macron said on X that all available resources had been deployed to fight what he described as \u201can exceptionally large wildfire\u201d.<\/p>\n
Authorities were investigating whether the fire was started intentionally, with a source saying there were \u201cabout 10 fire ignition points within a perimeter of 1000 metres, which suggests that it could have been deliberately set\u201d.<\/p>\n
The death toll from wildfires in Spain has reached 13, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters of its kind in recent times.<\/p>\n
The blaze that broke out on Thursday has transformed picturesque rural settlements into ghost towns and left a trail of destruction in the southeastern province of Almeria, home to many foreign residents, near the Mediterranean coast.<\/p>\n
Authorities have cautioned that the number of missing people meant the toll might rise further.<\/p>\n
Firefighters continue to fight the fire, which has scorched about 7000ha of forest and scrubland.<\/p>\n
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez blamed climate change during a tour of the disaster zone, saying increasingly erratic weather made civil protection emergencies \u201cincreasingly frequent\u201d.<\/p>\n
At its peak last week, the wildfires spread at up to 100m a minute, trapping victims in their vehicles or on foot as they tried to flee.<\/p>\n
Authorities suspect the wildfire began when a power line broke, setting fire to vegetation that had been parched after hot weather that pushed temperatures above 40C.<\/p>\n
Scientists say climate change caused by humans burning fossil fuels is making extreme weather such as heatwaves, which contribute to wildfires, more likely and more intense.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fire erupted on Sunday in the sprawling Fontainebleau Forest, about 60km southeast of the capital. The wildfire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":527483,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[46402,95,1975,6632,682,19101,51003,8278,4187,113068,12817,49062,1634,273,2024,247592,7572,3247,21520,1619,3180,111,139,7977,69,6943,17711,7192,147,171,2029,1491,87115,4143,66367],"class_list":["post-527482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ablaze","tag-and","tag-at","tag-battled","tag-being","tag-blazes","tag-burns","tag-conditions","tag-cost","tag-counts","tag-declared","tag-dry","tag-england","tag-environment","tag-europe","tag-exceptional","tag-firefighters","tag-forest","tag-hills","tag-london","tag-near","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-northern","tag-nz","tag-paris","tag-parts","tag-risk","tag-science","tag-southern","tag-spain","tag-wales","tag-wildfire","tag-wildfires","tag-windy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527482\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/527483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}