HIGH FENS NATIONAL PARK, Belgium, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Rain started falling on Monday morning over eastern Belgium, bringing crucial help to firefighters who \u200chave been battling to contain Belgium’s biggest ever wildfire which has threatened \u200cto reach the German border.<\/p>\n
The Belgian weather agency IRM expects between 5 and 9 millimetres of rain \u200bover the area and further rainfall on Tuesday. The temperature in the High Fens, a nature reserve in the east of Belgium burning since Friday, is set to fall to between 19 and 20 degrees Celsius (66 to 68 Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n
“This will change everything; \u200cin addition to the water \u2060associated with rainfall, there will also be an increase in humidity levels,” fire department captain Olivier Guist told Belgian radio station RTBF.<\/p>\n
Some \u2060500 firefighters from across the country and neighbouring Germany and Luxembourg are on the ground to limit a blaze that has already burned about 3,000 hectares (7,400 acres) in \u200bthe scarcely \u200bpopulated area of hills covered by moorland, \u200bpeat and woods.<\/p>\n
Across Europe, successive heatwaves \u200chave intensified drought and left vegetation tinder-dry, fuelling severe wildfires and making even generally wet areas, like High Fens, vulnerable.<\/p>\n
Local authorities ordered the evacuation of some 600 people in the towns of Butgenbach and Waimes on Saturday and have told them they should not yet return to their homes.<\/p>\n
Local prosecutors have opened an investigation \u200cinto the cause of the blaze.<\/p>\n
The German town \u200bof Monschau on Sunday asked residents near the \u200bborder with Belgium to leave, noting \u200bthat the fire was not expected to enter German territory \u200cbut significant smoke pollution was likely.<\/p>\n
The EU \u200bdeployed three helicopters and \u200btwo water bombing aircraft from around Europe since Saturday after Belgium requested emergency reinforcements.<\/p>\n
The wildfire is the country’s biggest on record, more than double \u200bthe size of a blaze \u200cin 2011 that burned close to 1,400 hectares, data from the European \u200bForest Fire Information System showed.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Bart Biesemans, Yves Herman, writing \u200bby Inti Landauro; Editing by Toby Chopra)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HIGH FENS NATIONAL PARK, Belgium, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Rain started falling on Monday morning over eastern Belgium,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,1564,14546],"class_list":["post-33050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-eastern-belgium","tag-firefighters"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117109822942069889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33050","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=33050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}