Firefighters launched a potentially decisive push on Tuesday to encircle Belgium’s largest wildfire in a century, despite wind and rain hampering air support over the High Fens nature reserve in the country’s east.
The blaze, which has charred a vast expanse of boggy peatlands, pine forests and hiking trails, grew over the weekend to roughly 3,000 hectares (7,500 acres) – half the size of Manhattan – with hundreds of firefighters working day and night to bring it under control.
Rain Offers Breakthrough
Intermittent rainfall since Monday helped slow the fire’s advance by boosting humidity levels. Regional government spokesperson Nicolas Yernaux told AFP that much of the fire was now under control and contained, with a final push underway on the last open front near the German border.
We are trying to definitively encircle the fire today.
The fire started on August 14 in the Hautes Fagnes nature reserve near the towns of Waimes and Baelen in Wallonia. It quickly became Belgium’s largest recorded wildfire, more than double the size of a 2011 blaze in the same area that burned nearly 1,400 hectares.
Dutch Helicopters and Local Farmers Join the Fight
Belgium called in Dutch military helicopters equipped with water-dropping bambi buckets to assist, while local farmers drove tractors hauling water tanks from a nearby lake in shifts around the clock. Interior Minister Bernard Quintin, who visited the site with King Philippe on Monday, warned that full extinction could take several weeks even after the flames are brought under control, as deep peat layers continue to smolder underground.
Temperatures in parts of Belgium reached as high as 37 degrees Celsius last week, creating drought conditions that left the reserve’s ancient peatlands dangerously dry and vulnerable. The fires come amid a summer of extreme heat across Europe that has also triggered major wildfires in Greece and strained nuclear power output in France.
Sources: AFP; Reuters; Channel News Asia; BBC News
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