Forest fires: Will France experience more fires in 2025 than in previous summers?
Firefighters remain on alert. Vaucluse and Bouches-du-Rhône are on red alert for fires this Monday, July 28. For the third consecutive day, Météo France has assessed the risk of forest fires in these two departments as "very high."
While Vaucluse has been spared summer fires this year, 750 hectares have already burned in Bouches-du-Rhône, north of Marseille, on July 8 and 9, destroying homes in the process . In total, fires destroyed 23,471 hectares of forest between January 1 and July 22, 2025, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System (Effis). A figure more than 2.5 times higher than the average for the period 2006-2024 at the same date (9,037 ha) but whose scale cannot be explained by the fires of recent weeks.
In just under six months, 2025 has already ranked fourth among the years with the most destructive forest fires in France. In the last twenty years, only four years have been worse: 2022 (66,337 hectares went up in smoke), 2019 (43,602 hectares), and 2021 (30,652 hectares), according to Effis data. By comparison, the number of hectares burned across the European Union this year is 1.9 times higher than the average recorded for the same period between 2006 and 2024.
This year is also notable for a particularly high number of declared forest fires, with 236 fires recorded in France since January 1. But unlike 2022, a record year during which fires did not spare the north of the country, the fires are concentrated at the start of the season in the south.
The Aude region was particularly vulnerable to the onslaught of fire. As early as Sunday, June 29, a poorly extinguished barbecue set ablaze part of the Bizanet massif. The flames covered more than 400 hectares in two days. The following Sunday, a fire covered nearly 500 hectares near the town of Douzens, after a car caught fire on the hard shoulder of the A61 motorway.
Firefighters had barely brought this blaze under control when another broke out on the outskirts of Narbonne during the night of July 7-8, destroying 2,100 hectares. This weekend, a new forest fire destroyed 300 hectares of vegetation in Sigean. These fires, along with those north of Marseille and Martigues, have increased the number of hectares destroyed since the beginning of the summer.
Paradoxically, despite these repeated fires, the sharp increase in the area of forest destroyed by flames was not recorded this July. It dates back to the end of winter. More than 14,000 hectares of forest burned between February 11 and March 11, in a multitude of fires that affected the departments of southern France. At that time, an exceptional drought, particularly in Hérault and the Pyrénées-Orientales, combined with strong winds, had caused multiple fires.
The area of vegetation affected at the end of winter is thus three times greater than the 3,937 hectares burned between July 1 and 22, according to Effis. Thus, if the fires of 2025 are among the most destructive of the last two decades, it is not because of those of this summer.
La Croıx
