{"id":32587,"date":"2026-08-15T12:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T12:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/32587\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T12:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T12:50:11","slug":"eu-sends-aircraft-as-belgium-requests-reinforcements-to-help-fight-record-wildfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/32587\/","title":{"rendered":"EU sends aircraft as Belgium requests reinforcements to help fight record wildfire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A Belgian police McDonnell Douglas MD-902 Explorer helicopter prepares to drop water over a wildfire in the Hautes Fagnes (High Fens) nature reserve in Jalhay, eastern Belgium on Friday.NICOLAS LAMBERT\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The European Union deployed three helicopters and two water bomber aircraft to tackle a wildfire raging in eastern Belgium on Saturday, the bloc\u2019s crisis commissioner said, after Belgium requested emergency reinforcements to control its biggest blaze in decades.<\/p>\n

The wildfire in the High Fens, Belgium\u2019s largest nature reserve, has been burning since Friday, with local firefighters, farmers and the army deployed to battle the blaze.<\/p>\n

By early Saturday afternoon, it had burned 1,600 hectares, local media reported, citing statistics from the governor of Liege, the local province.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A firefighter sprays water at the scene of a bushfire along the E25 highway in Bastogne, on August 3. The bushfire near the Withimont highway rest area forced a partial closure of the E25 towards Luxembourg.JULIEN WARNAND\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

That would make the fire the biggest on record in Belgium, surpassing a blaze in 2011 which burned nearly 1,400 hectares, data from the European Forest Fire Information System showed.<\/p>\n

European countries including Belgium suffered their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, fuelling the hot and dry conditions that support wildfires. Scientists have confirmed human-caused climate change is increasing the \u201cfire-prone\u201d weather conditions that allow wildfires to spread faster and burn longer.<\/p>\n

The EU coordinates the deployment of extra resources pooled from European countries, when a country requests emergency help. The aircraft sent to Belgium on Saturday were from the Czech Republic, Sweden and the Netherlands, EU Crisis Commissioner Hadja Lahbib said in a post on X.<\/p>\n

Firefighters and farmers were pumping water from local lakes to battle the blaze, a spokesperson for the infrastructure department for the region of Wallonia told Reuters on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A Belgian police McDonnell Douglas MD-902 Explorer helicopter prepares to drop water over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32588,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[14944,14934,14945,7,2894,14928,14946,210,14927,14939,14940,14936,14929,14926,447,897,319,14938,14933,14956,14930,14931,493,14935,267,7299,3735,14152,14951,14952,14954,14949,14953,14947,14950,6666,14942,14943,192,14941,14948,1816,86,54,14937,14932,142,14955],"class_list":["post-32587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-belgium","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32587\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}