{"id":33258,"date":"2026-08-17T23:52:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T23:52:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/33258\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T23:52:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T23:52:12","slug":"rain-aids-fight-against-belgiums-biggest-wildfire-as-blazes-rip-through-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/33258\/","title":{"rendered":"Rain aids fight against Belgium’s biggest wildfire, as blazes rip through Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

High Fens National Park, Belgium
Reuters<\/a><\/p>\n

Rain over eastern Belgium on Monday brought some relief to firefighters battling to contain the country\u2019s biggest wildfire on record, which had threatened to reach the German border.<\/p>\n

Wildfires have ripped through Europe this summer, with successive heatwaves fuelled by climate change intensifying drought and leaving vegetation tinder-dry.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Belgian firefighters work in a forest affected by a wildfire in Waimes, Belgium, on 17th August, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters\/Yves Herman<\/p>\n

From France and Spain to Greece, fires have killed more than 20 people, forced hundreds of thousands to flee their homes and burned 576,000 hectares across Europe this year, data from \u200bthe European Forest Fire Information System shows \u2013 an area twice the size of Luxembourg.<\/p>\n

Army, farmers battle Belgium\u2019s biggest fire
In Greece, an elderly couple died at the weekend as fires swept \u200bthrough the island of Salamina, where 500 people were evacuated by ferry after wind pushed the flames into residential areas.<\/p>\n

Spanish firefighters stabilised a massive wildfire in Andalusia in the south that has burned nearly 40,000 hectares since 6th August, while a fire in the tourist \u200btown of Omis, Croatia, forced 1,000 people to flee.<\/p>\n

In Belgium, firefighters aided by rain and lower temperatures early on Monday had contained parts of the blaze in the High Fens, a nature reserve in the east of Belgium which has been burning since Friday \u2013 following a heatwave that saw thermometers in parts of Belgium hit 37 degrees Celsius.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the biggest ecological disaster in terms of forest fires, that\u2019s clear, for Belgium,\u201d said Nicolas Yernaux, a spokesperson for the administration of the Wallonia region.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t say that the fire is contained. It flares up all the time,\u201d he told Reuters.<\/p>\n

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Some 500 firefighters \u200bfrom across Belgium, neighbouring Germany and Luxembourg, as well as farmers, soldiers and reinforcement aircraft from the European Union\u2019s emergency reserve, have been battling the blaze.<\/p>\n

Having burned 3,000 hectares, the wildfire is Belgium\u2019s biggest on record, far surpassing a blaze in 2011 which burned close to 1,400 hectares. Evacuated residents have not yet been allowed to return home.<\/p>\n

The fire has penetrated the nature reserve\u2019s metres-deep peat bogs \u2013 meaning it could take months to fully extinguish. Peat fires can smoulder underground, without flames, for long periods.<\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s fire season far from over
Extreme fire risk has become a regular part of European summers in recent years, as hotter, drier weather caused by climate change has combined with other factors \u2013 including rural abandonment, which has left land untended and allowed flammable, dry vegetation to build up in forests \u2013 to fuel fast-spreading fires.<\/p>\n

Fires were also raging on Monday in north-eastern Spain, where a firefighter died on Sunday, and in northern Portugal\u2019s Braganca district.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A firefighter walks as a wildfire in eastern Belgium threatens to spread to the border town of Monschau, in Kalterherberg, Germany, on 17th August, 2026. PICTURE: Reuters\/Leon Kuegeler<\/p>\n

About 90 per cent of wildfires are ignited by human activities, such as campfires or discarded cigarettes. Prosecutors in Belgium have opened an investigation into the cause of the blaze.<\/p>\n

German firefighters were also working to contain a fire front 1.5 kilometres away from buildings in the evacuated German village of Ruitzhof, close to the Belgian border. A local fire department spokesperson said the situation was \u201cstatic\u201d.<\/p>\n

Europe had already suffered its worst fire season on record last year, with more than a million hectares of land burned. Some countries, including France, have smashed through their annual records this year, with the traditional June-September fire season far from over.<\/p>\n

Dozens of people in the village Le Porge, in south-western France, where hundreds of homes were destroyed by a megafire last month, booed French Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu as he visited on Monday. Residents have criticised the government\u2019s response and accused authorities of prioritising richer areas.<\/p>\n

\u2013 With reporting by BART BIESEMANS, INTI LANDAURO, ANDREAS KRANZ, PETRA WISCHGOLL, IVANA SEKULARAC and ANDREY KHALIP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"High Fens National Park, BelgiumReuters Rain over eastern Belgium on Monday brought some relief to firefighters battling to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,69,18052,18053,17700,115,324,335,116],"class_list":["post-33258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-belgium","tag-belgium","tag-europe","tag-european-forest-fire-information-system","tag-european-heatwaves","tag-european-wildfires","tag-france","tag-greece","tag-portugal","tag-spain"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@be\/117113542900637152","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33258","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=33258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/be\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}