{"id":1150080,"date":"2026-08-15T13:22:23","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T13:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1150080\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T13:22:23","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T13:22:23","slug":"eu-sends-aircraft-as-belgium-requests-reinforcements-to-help-fight-record-wildfire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1150080\/","title":{"rendered":"EU sends aircraft as Belgium requests reinforcements to help fight record wildfire"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A Belgian police McDonnell Douglas MD-902 Explorer helicopter prepares to drop water over a wildfire in the Hautes Fagnes (High Fens) nature reserve in Jalhay, eastern Belgium on Friday.NICOLAS LAMBERT\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The European Union deployed three helicopters and two water bomber aircraft to tackle a wildfire raging in eastern Belgium on Saturday, the bloc\u2019s crisis commissioner said, after Belgium requested emergency reinforcements to control its biggest blaze in decades.<\/p>\n

The wildfire in the High Fens, Belgium\u2019s largest nature reserve, has been burning since Friday, with local firefighters, farmers and the army deployed to battle the blaze.<\/p>\n

By early Saturday afternoon, it had burned 1,600 hectares, local media reported, citing statistics from the governor of Liege, the local province.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A firefighter sprays water at the scene of a bushfire along the E25 highway in Bastogne, on August 3. The bushfire near the Withimont highway rest area forced a partial closure of the E25 towards Luxembourg.JULIEN WARNAND\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

That would make the fire the biggest on record in Belgium, surpassing a blaze in 2011 which burned nearly 1,400 hectares, data from the European Forest Fire Information System showed.<\/p>\n

European countries including Belgium suffered their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, fuelling the hot and dry conditions that support wildfires. Scientists have confirmed human-caused climate change is increasing the \u201cfire-prone\u201d weather conditions that allow wildfires to spread faster and burn longer.<\/p>\n

The EU coordinates the deployment of extra resources pooled from European countries, when a country requests emergency help. The aircraft sent to Belgium on Saturday were from the Czech Republic, Sweden and the Netherlands, EU Crisis Commissioner Hadja Lahbib said in a post on X.<\/p>\n

Firefighters and farmers were pumping water from local lakes to battle the blaze, a spokesperson for the infrastructure department for the region of Wallonia told Reuters on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A Belgian police McDonnell Douglas MD-902 Explorer helicopter prepares to drop water over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1150081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[6934,6925,6935,1500,6918,6936,943,6917,6930,6931,6927,6919,6916,1700,2266,728,2000,299,5187,6929,6923,6946,6920,6921,1234,6926,388,3611,6607,603,6941,6942,6944,6939,6943,6937,6940,6922,6932,6933,285,3027,6938,6924,53,183,6928,727,263,6945],"class_list":["post-1150080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1150081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}