BAELEN, Belgium (AP) \u2014 Firefighters battled a massive wildfire in eastern Belgium on Sunday that has burned more than 27 square kilometers (10 square miles) in the High Fens, a large nature reserve, in one of the country\u2019s worst wildfires in recent history.<\/p>\n
About 600 residents in nearby municipalities in Waimes and B\u00fctgenbach, in Li\u00e8ge province near the German border, were told to evacuate Saturday as winds shifted and smoke spread through the area. Authorities also advised tourists to leave, while a nearby gymnasium was opened to receive evacuees.<\/p>\n
Li\u00e8ge provincial governor Herv\u00e9 Jamar said in a statement Sunday that more than 250 emergency personnel have been deployed, including over 100 Belgian and German firefighters, police and military officers and civil protection staff, helped by firefighting helicopters operated by Belgium\u2019s federal police and the Netherlands,<\/p>\n
Authorities said no homes had been affected as of Sunday morning, though the fire remained close to residential areas and heavy smoke persisted. They urged people to stay away from the fire zone, warning that unnecessary traffic could obstruct emergency vehicles and complicate firefighting operations.<\/p>\n
Belgium activated the European Union\u2019s civil protection mechanism to receive assistance from other countries, EU Commissioner Hadja Lahbib, who is in charge of crisis management, said on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe High Fens are burning. Belgium is not facing it alone,\u201d Lahbib said. Sweden sent two water-bombing aircraft, while three helicopters \u2014 two from the Netherlands and one from the Czech Republic \u2014 were also being deployed.<\/p>\n
The fire follows weeks of unusually hot and dry weather. The High Fens\u2019 mix of heathland and peat bogs has complicated efforts to contain the flames.<\/p>\n
The blaze has far surpassed a 2011 fire that burned nearly 14 square kilometers (5.4 square miles) in the same area and had been Belgium\u2019s previous largest on record, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System.<\/p>\n
In the nearby town of Monschau, in Germany, local authorities warned overnight that the fire was about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the border and said firefighters were on alert. Early Sunday morning, the town website recommended that people in three outlying districts near the border leave the area temporarily because officials couldn\u2019t rule out health risks caused by smoke.<\/p>\n
Belgium was hit by another spell of intense heat this week, with temperatures reaching about 37 C (98.6 F) in parts of the country Friday. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n \n Sign up for Morning Wire: In France, firefighters battling a wildfire in a pine forest in the southwestern Landes region faced no major flare-ups overnight, Landes Prefect Gilles Clavreul said. Authorities estimated the total area burned at 17 square kilometers (6.6 square miles), while about 650 people had been evacuated from their homes.<\/p>\n \u201cThe situation is developing rather favorably,\u201d Clavreul told reporters Sunday.<\/p>\n It was the third major wildfire in the vast pine forests of southwestern France this summer, following two others in late July. A massive wildfire<\/a> in the neighboring Gironde department burned about 420 square kilometers (162 square miles) and forced the evacuation of about 220,000 people<\/a> as it spread toward the Atlantic coast and the Bordeaux area.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Corbet reported from Paris. AP writer Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAELEN, Belgium (AP) \u2014 Firefighters battled a massive wildfire in eastern Belgium on Sunday that has burned more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,672,8415,17616,674,125,14532,264,172,17648,17647,1023,16680,142],"class_list":["post-32781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-belgium-government","tag-climate","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-eurocopa-2024","tag-european-union","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-germany","tag-gilles-clavreul","tag-herv-jamar","tag-netherlands","tag-wildfires","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117104852615194709","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32781","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=32781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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