The conditions had been building for weeks. On Friday, the temperature in the area reached about 37 degrees Celsius, after weeks without significant rain. Liege province governor Herve Jamar said the extremely dry ground had made the situation worse.<\/p>\n
Belgium is not alone in this. Weather services recorded temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius in several European countries on Thursday, and Britain had its hottest day of the year that same day, 38.1 degrees Celsius in west London.<\/p>\n
Two Dead on the Greek Island of Salamina<\/p>\n
While Belgium was defending its border, Greece was counting its dead. On the island of Salamina, west of Athens, two people were killed on Sunday. The bodies of an elderly couple were found in the village of Peristeria, near the point believed to be where the fire started.<\/p>\n
About 260 firefighters were deployed on Salamina, along with roughly fifteen ground crews, 10 planes and eight helicopters, while the coast guard evacuated about 500 people from the beaches. Vasilios Vathrakogiannis, brigadier general of the Greek fire service, explained how little time there had been:<\/p>\n
Those conditions allowed the fire to reach dangerous levels quickly, spreading rapidly within seven minutes.<\/p>\n
The difference between the two fires that same weekend comes down to that number. In High Fens, the fire advanced for three days through an uninhabited protected area, giving authorities time to evacuate two municipalities before it got close. On Salamina, the fire front moved through neighborhoods on the outskirts of Athens, and the coast guard was pulling people off the beaches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The conditions had been building for weeks. On Friday, the temperature in the area reached about 37 degrees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,17570,17593,5709,17566],"class_list":["post-33170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-belgium-wildfire","tag-europe-wildfires","tag-evacuation","tag-high-fens"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117111034517252988","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33170","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=33170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}