{"id":32963,"date":"2026-08-17T00:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T00:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/32963\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T00:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T00:10:12","slug":"belgium-wildfire-prompts-evacuation-call-in-german-border-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/32963\/","title":{"rendered":"Belgium wildfire prompts evacuation call in German border town"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A German town close to Belgium on Sunday urged some of its residents to evacuate as the worst wildfire in modern Belgian history raged just over the border.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to a statement from the town of Monschau, the blaze\u2019s front lies currently 1.5 kilometres (0.9 miles) from the Germany-Belgium border and just 1.8 kilometres from the nearest inhabited area.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While the flames are not currently expected to reach German territory, \u201csevere air pollution due to the smoke\u201d is to be expected, the town statement said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt has therefore been decided to recommend that residents of areas close to the border leave these zones,\u201d added the municipality, which has a population of 12,000 inhabitants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Belgian authorities have already ordered the evacuation of the settlement of Kuechelscheid, a 10-minute drive from Monschau.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Some 1,800 people were evacuated in western Germany overnight Thursday to Friday as a result of a wildfire, one of many to rage across a tinder-dry and drought-hit Europe this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A German town close to Belgium on Sunday urged some of its residents to evacuate as the worst&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,1608,5523],"class_list":["post-32963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-international","tag-mna"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117107951190085251","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32963","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=32963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}