{"id":33136,"date":"2026-08-17T11:30:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:30:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/33136\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T11:30:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:30:40","slug":"firefighters-battle-massive-wildfires-in-belgium-and-greece-as-2-die-on-an-island-near-athens-world-news-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/33136\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefighters battle massive wildfires in Belgium and Greece as 2 die on an island near Athens | World News"},"content":{"rendered":"

BAELEN, Belgium \u2013 Firefighters battled a massive wildfire<\/a> that scorched a nature reserve in eastern Belgium and another on a Greek island near Athens where two people were killed on Sunday as hot and dry conditions fueled fires across parts of Europe<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A blaze in eastern Belgium burned about 12 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 the nearby municipalities of Waimes and B\u00fctgenbach, in Li\u00e8ge province near the German border, were told to evacuate on 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, as well as police and military officers and civil protection staff. Firefighting helicopters operated by Belgium\u2019s federal police and the Netherlands also helped.<\/p>\n

In Greece, two people were killed in a wildfire Sunday on the island of Salamina, west of Athens, Greek firefighters said.<\/p>\n

The bodies were recovered in the village of Peristeria, where strong winds fueled the rapidly spreading blaze. A second blaze was reported in the Selini area. Firefighting and coast guard vessels evacuated some 500 beachgoers in the area.<\/p>\n

Some 260 firefighters were responding to the blazes, including 15 ground teams, 10 aircraft and eight helicopters.<\/p>\n

The island had been placed at high wildfire risk on Sunday, with near gale-force winds. \u201cThese conditions enabled the fire to quickly reach dangerous proportions and spread rapidly within seven minutes toward nearby residential areas,\u201d said Fire Brigadier General Vasileios Vathrakogiannis.<\/p>\n

The blaze now torching Belgium has far surpassed a 2011 fire that burned nearly 5.4 square miles in the same area and was previously the country\u2019s largest wildfire on record, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System.<\/p>\n

Nicolas Yernaux, a spokesperson for the Public Service of Wallonia, said conditions were much worse this time. \u201cWe\u2019re dealing with something much deeper because we have very dry soil,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ren\u00e9 Dahmen, chief engineer at the Department of Nature and Forest, said the fire was still spreading Sunday in an area that was difficult for crews to reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the eastern flank, there\u2019s a line at least a kilometer long where the fire is slowly advancing toward a municipal forest,\u201d Dahmen said. \u201cThat\u2019s the first priority now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interior Minister Bernard Quintin said on X firefighters managed to keep the fire from spreading towards the west and toward the German town of Monschau.<\/p>\n

In Germany, local authorities warned Sunday that the fire was just under a mile from the border.<\/p>\n

Some farmers from both Belgium and Germany filled up tanker trucks, pumping water from a nearby lake before heading toward the fire area to help firefighters.<\/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 \u2013 two from the Netherlands and one from the Czech Republic \u2013 were also being deployed.<\/p>\n

The fire follows weeks of unusually hot and dry weather<\/a>. The High Fens\u2019 mix of heathland and peat bogs has complicated efforts to contain the flames.<\/p>\n

Belgium was hit by another spell of intense heat this week, with temperatures reaching about 98.6 F in parts of the country Friday.<\/p>\n

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 6.6 square miles, while about 650 people had been evacuated from their homes.<\/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 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

In the U.K., emergency crews were fighting 14 wildfires in South Wales with the support of military personnel. Authorities warned that although the heat wave is easing, drought conditions mean the risk of wildfires remains high.<\/p>\n

Fires gutted more than a dozen homes in the West Midlands in central England this week as officials recorded the hottest day of the year on Thursday, when temperatures reached 100.6 F.<\/p>\n

In Germany, firefighters made significant progress against a wildfire in the H\u00fcrtgen Forest, allowing about 2,000 evacuated residents of Gey to return home Saturday. Officials said Sunday there were no open flames and crews had established a cleared cordon around the affected area to prevent the fire from spreading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAELEN, Belgium \u2013 Firefighters battled a massive wildfire that scorched a nature reserve in eastern Belgium and another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,17616,17615,14532,264,16680,142],"class_list":["post-33136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-europe-wildfires-belgium","tag-fires","tag-general-news","tag-wildfires","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117110625019322353","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33136","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=33136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}