Firefighters and farmers backed by water-dropping aircraft battled through a fourth day Monday to tame Belgium’s worst wildfire in a century, still burning through pristine parkland though it was halted short of the German border.<\/p>\n
The blaze charring the High Fens nature reserve, a vast expanse of boggy peatlands, pine forests and hiking trails, has grown since Friday to 3,000 hectares (7,500 acres) — half the size of Manhattan.<\/p>\n
Crisis cell spokesman Tony Hosmans told AFP Monday the fire was “had not spread further but we cannot yet say it is contained.”<\/p>\n
“It could change according to the weather,” he warned.<\/p>\n
Europe has been swept by weeks of devastating wildfires fuelled by dry conditions and a historically hot summer, with France, Greece, Portugal and Spain also battling major fires.<\/p>\n
Hosmans confirmed the High Fens blaze was no longer advancing towards the German border after creeping nearer over the weekend, prompting an evacuation order in the town of Monschau.<\/p>\n
Much-needed rain delivered some respite Monday to the 500 firefighters and emergency crews mobilised on site, but officials said conditions could shift fast.<\/p>\n
Philipp Krueger, firefighting chief in Monschau, told reporters crews were preparing to deal with “strong winds” on Tuesday — warning it was a challenging “new situation.”<\/p>\n
– ‘Won’t forget this’ –<\/p>\n
“We are continuing to do everything to ensure nobody finds themselves in immediate danger,” the town’s mayor Carmen Kramer told a news briefing.<\/p>\n
At a community centre in Monschau, Ulrich and Petra Mertens were among a handful of evacuees who spent the night on stretcher beds, with their dogs Cleo and Kruemel at their side.<\/p>\n
The couple made up their minds to leave as they saw flames burning on the horizon and the air became choked with foul-smelling fumes.<\/p>\n
“We thought, let’s do it,” said Petra Mertens, a 63-year-old retired carer.<\/p>\n
“The air was terrible, with the smoke we thought, ‘There’s no way we can do that to the dogs.'”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I won’t forget this any time soon,” she told AFP. “You need time to process it all. You see just how quickly you could lose a home.”<\/p>\n
– Largest since 1911 –<\/p>\n
The High Fens blaze broke out in an area that was ravaged by massive fires in 1911, during a similar period of heatwaves and drought.<\/p>\n
It is the country’s largest wildfire since, and Belgium’s King Philippe visited the fire zone Monday in a show of support for the Herculean effort to contain it.<\/p>\n
A huge area at the border has been blanketed by a thick plume of yellowish smoke, with fumes detected as far as eastern France, where authorities issued an air-pollution alert.<\/p>\n
The smoke hazard also triggered the evacuation of two Belgian villages, whose residents were still under instruction to stay away.<\/p>\n
– ‘As long as it needs’ –<\/p>\n
On-site operations have been made much harder by the fens’ terrain — a patchwork of heath, peat bogs and raised wooden boardwalks where heavy vehicles risk sinking into the ground — and firefighters struggle to tackle the fire at close range.<\/p>\n
They have been counting heavily on aerial assistance to bring the situation under control.<\/p>\n
Aerial reinforcements were on the way with two helicopters from Germany and two from Norway set to join water-bombing aircraft and helicopters from Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium already on site.<\/p>\n
Local farmers have also poured in to help, with a ballet of tractors pulling in tankers of water drawn from a nearby lake.<\/p>\n
Romain Monet, a farmer from nearby Waremme, worked through the night — with a colleague coming in to take over the day shift.<\/p>\n
“We’ll take it in turns as long as it needs — the team is all set,” he told AFP. “We’ll keep going until the finish line.”<\/p>\n
Like much of Europe, Belgium has experienced a new spell of intense heat and drought in recent days.<\/p>\n
Temperatures reached as high as 37C in some parts of the country on Friday, creating conditions conducive to wildfire outbreaks.<\/p>\n
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