Wildfire in France: the law, the risk map, and protecting your home

Wildfire has stopped being a Mediterranean-only problem. As the risk spreads north and west, so does a legal duty most British owners have never heard of: in 52 départements you are required to clear the vegetation around your house, and the fines for not doing it are severe. Here's the whole picture for 2026 — where the risk is, what the law makes you do, how to make a house defensible, and what to do when a fire actually comes.

Written by the Pimpernel team · Updated for 2026 · About a 10-minute read

The short version

Clearing vegetation is a legal obligation, not a choice. The obligation légale de débroussaillement (OLD) now applies across 52 départements — up from 48 in April 2026 — and it's spreading beyond the south.
The duty is 50 metres around your buildings, measured from each outside wall — extendable to 100 metres by the maire or préfet in the most exposed zones.
It can cross onto your neighbour's land. If your 50-metre zone spills over the boundary, you must clear there too — after notifying them by registered letter.
The fines are steep. Up to €50 per square metre left uncleared, plus a €1,500 fine — and, worse, your insurer can cut or refuse a fire payout if you weren't compliant.
It's disclosed when you buy or rent. Since January 2025 the OLD must appear in the property information pack (IAL), so check it before you sign.
Check your own risk on the official maps. Géorisques shows whether your plot is in the OLD zone; Météo-France publishes a daily fire-risk forecast each summer.
Defensible space and a hardened house — clearance zones, ember-proof vents, closed shutters, clean gutters — are what actually save a building. Nine fires in ten are started by people.
Know the drill before the day. Call 18 or 112, don't flee at the last moment, shelter in a cleared house rather than a car, and keep a go-bag ready in season.

The risk has moved — and so has the map

For a long time, wildfire in France was something that happened to other people: the Mediterranean south, Provence, the Gard, Corsica, and the pine forests of the Gironde. If you bought a stone house in a green, temperate corner of the country, it wasn't your problem. That is no longer a safe assumption. The 2026 season was among the worst on record — one blaze in the south-west burned around 115,000 hectares, the largest single fire in France since 1949 — and the pattern every year now is the same: the season starts earlier, lasts longer, and reaches further north and west than it used to.

The official response has been to widen the map. Météo-France has published a daily Météo des forêts fire-risk forecast every summer since June 2023 — a simple four-colour scale, département by département, for today and the next couple of days. And the legal risk map, the one that actually imposes duties on you, has grown with it. The interactive below shows the broad picture; the detail for your own plot always comes from the official sources, which we'll point you to.

Where the risk is

Tap a region for the picture there. This is a broad guide, not your legal status — check Géorisques for your actual plot.

Tap a region to start

The colour is a rough guide to how exposed each region is. Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Corsica and Occitanie remain the hottest; Nouvelle-Aquitaine now burns badly too; and the risk is creeping north and west into regions long thought safe.

Highest High & rising Spreading Lower

A broad-brush guide to regional exposure — not a legal document. Whether the clearance obligation applies to your plot is decided commune by commune; check the official Géorisques zoning and your préfecture's arrêté.

Two things follow from that map. If you're anywhere near the red or amber, wildfire is a live planning consideration for your property — and quite possibly a legal duty. And if you're in the paler zones, don't file it under "not my problem": the direction of travel is one way, and the classified list has grown every year since 2023.

The law nobody mentions at the notaire's: the OLD

Here is the single most important thing in this guide, because it's the part that carries fines and can void an insurance claim. In the classified départements, clearing the vegetation around your buildings is not gardening advice — it's a legal obligation, the obligation légale de débroussaillement, or OLD, rooted in the Code forestier and sharpened by the law of 10 July 2023.

The mechanics are precise. If your property sits inside, or within 200 metres of, a classified forest, wood, lande, maquis or garrigue, you must clear combustible vegetation to a depth of 50 metres around every building, measured from each outside wall. In the most exposed zones — typically those with a plan de prévention des risques d'incendie de forêt (PPRIF) — the maire or préfet can push that to 100 metres. Private access lanes must be cleared for 10 metres either side, so the fire brigade can actually get to you. As of the April 2026 arrêté, this covers 52 départements, up from 48, with new entrants including the Corrèze, Haute-Loire, and — tellingly — the Essonne and Seine-et-Marne at the edge of the Paris region.

"Débroussailler" doesn't mean scorched earth. It means cutting and removing the fuel a fire feeds on: tall grass, brush, shrubs and low branches; clearing dead wood and cuttings off the ground; and keeping flammable vegetation and materials well back from walls and roofs. You can keep trees — you thin and prune them, breaking up the continuous canopy a fire climbs through. The diagram below shows what the zones around a house actually look like.

The clearance duty works in rings: the closer to the house, the less fuel there should be. In the managed zone you thin and prune rather than fell — breaking up the continuous brush and canopy a fire climbs through — clear dead wood, and move woodpiles and gas bottles well away from the walls. The standard obligation reaches 50 metres from each wall; a maire or préfet can extend it to 100. If that ring crosses onto a neighbour's land, the duty follows — you clear there too, after telling them by registered letter.

What nobody tells you

The 50 metres can cross the boundary — and the bill lands on you

This is the wrinkle that stuns British owners. The 50-metre zone is measured from your walls, not your boundary — so if your house sits close to the edge of your plot, your clearance duty extends onto your neighbour's land. You are legally responsible for clearing it, at your cost, after informing them by registered letter (lettre recommandée). It feels back-to-front, but the logic is that fire doesn't respect fences: the zone that protects your house is defined by your house.

The teeth: fines, and the insurance trap

The reason the OLD deserves your attention isn't civic duty — it's money, on two fronts. The direct penalty for leaving your land uncleared is an administrative fine of up to €50 per square metre: forget a modest 500 m² and that's €25,000 in theory, on top of a €1,500 fixed fine as a fifth-class offence, with heavier penalties for repeat cases.

But the quieter, nastier risk is the insurance one. If a fire damages your home and it emerges that you hadn't met your clearance obligation, your insurer can reduce or refuse the payout. A failure to débroussailler that contributed to the loss is exactly the kind of thing a claims assessor looks for. So the practical advice is blunt: if you're in an OLD zone, do the clearance, and keep the evidence — dated photographs and the invoices from whoever did the work — so you can prove compliance if you ever need to. It's the cheapest insurance you'll buy.

What nobody tells you

It's in the paperwork now — if you know to look

Since 1 January 2025, the OLD must be disclosed in the property information pack (the information acquéreur locataire, or IAL) whenever a property in the zone is sold or let. So if you're buying, the obligation should be flagged in the file — but "should be" is doing work there. Ask the notaire directly whether the property is subject to the OLD and at what depth, and cross-check on Géorisques yourself. Inheriting the clearance duty of an overgrown plot is not a surprise you want after completion.

Making a house defensible — beyond the legal minimum

Clearance is the foundation, but a house survives a wildfire on more than its garden. When a fire front passes, the thing that actually ignites most homes isn't a wall of flame — it's embers, windblown burning fragments that land in gutters, blow through vents, or lodge in a woodpile against the wall. Hardening a house is about denying those embers somewhere to catch.

The practical checklist, drawn from how the French prevention guidance and international fire services think about it:

Keep the immediate zone bare. The first few metres around the walls should have nothing that readily burns — no woodpile against the house, no gas bottles, no dead pot plants, no wooden trellis leading flame up to the eaves.
Screen every vent and opening. Fit fine metal mesh (around 2 mm) over air vents, under-roof spaces and any gap embers could enter. This is one of the highest-value things you can do.
Clear gutters and the roof. Dead leaves and pine needles in a gutter are a perfect ember trap. Keep them clean through the season, and clear debris off the roof and out of valleys.
Close up when a fire threatens. Solid shutters closed, windows shut. Embers get in through open or broken glass; closed shutters buy a house a real chance.
Prune the canopy away from the roof. No overhanging branches touching or near the roofline; break the ladder that lets fire climb from ground to canopy to house.
Mind the slope. Fire runs uphill fast. If your house sits above a vegetated slope, that downhill side needs the most attention — flames from below reach further than you'd think.

When a fire actually comes

Prevention is most of the battle, but the day itself has its own rules, and some of them are counter-intuitive. Nine wildfires in ten are started by people — a stray barbecue, a spark from machinery, a discarded cigarette — so the first duty in high-risk weather is simply not to be the cause: no open flames, no garden burning, no strimming in the dry heat of the afternoon.

If you see smoke or flame, call 18 (the pompiers) or 112 (the European emergency number) and locate the fire from a safe distance — don't approach it. Then, if fire threatens your area, the guidance runs against instinct in two important ways:

Don't flee at the last minute. Most wildfire deaths happen to people caught in the open or in cars on choked roads, not in cleared houses. If you haven't been told to evacuate and it's already close, a cleared, shuttered house is usually safer than a car in the smoke. Evacuate early on official instruction, or shelter — not the dangerous middle.
Shelter properly. Inside, shutters and windows closed, doors shut, mechanical ventilation switched off so you're not drawing smoke in. Move to the side of the house away from the fire. Keep hydrated, keep low if there's smoke, and wait for the front to pass — it often moves through faster than you fear.
Have a go-bag in season. Documents, medication, water, a torch, phone chargers, sturdy cotton clothing (not synthetics, which melt) and an N95-type mask for smoke. Ready by the door from June, so an early evacuation order doesn't become a scramble.

And through the season, make the daily Météo des forêts check a habit, the way you'd check rain before hanging washing. A red day is a day to be careful with anything that sparks, and to know where your go-bag is.

The practical playbook

Find out if you're in the OLD zone — before you buy if you can, via the IAL and Géorisques; if you already own, check the préfecture's arrêté for your commune and the exact depth (50 or 100 m).
Do the clearance, and do it by 1 June — the usual deadline before fire season — then keep it up through the year so it doesn't grow back.
Photograph and invoice the work so you can prove compliance to your insurer if the worst happens.
Harden the house: mesh the vents, clear the gutters, keep the immediate zone bare, fit or maintain solid shutters.
Talk to the neighbours whose land your zone crosses — early and in writing — and, ideally, coordinate; a defensible house next to an overgrown one is only half-protected.
Build the season habits: daily risk-map check, a ready go-bag, and a clear family plan for evacuate-early-or-shelter.

Buying somewhere rural?

The OLD is one of several things about a country property that never come up until you own it. Our free property walkthrough covers the buying process step by step, including the searches and disclosures — like the IAL — that flag risks before you commit.

Try the free property walkthrough →

Sorting your home insurance?

Fire cover is exactly where the clearance obligation and your policy meet — get one wrong and the other won't pay. Our insurance guide explains what's compulsory, how the French market really works, and how to switch without the usual headache.

Read the insurance guide →

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This guide offers practical, general information, not legal advice. Wildfire law, the classified départements, the clearance depths and the penalties change — the OLD zoning has been extended repeatedly and will change again. The interactive map is a broad illustration, not a statement of your legal status: whether the obligation applies to your plot, and at what depth, is determined by official zoning and your local préfecture's arrêté. Always check Géorisques and your commune, confirm your position with the mairie or a notaire, and follow the instructions of the emergency services and préfecture during any fire.