Belgium Battles Its Largest Wildfire Since 1911 as High Fens Blaze Nears the German Border

Water-bombing aircraft and farmers' tractors joined several hundred firefighters on Sunday against Belgium's largest wildfire in more than a century, burning through the High Fens nature reserve near the German border. The blaze grew to 3,000 hectares — about 7,500 acres — within two days of breaking out in the park's peat bogs and pine forests, and area firefighting chief Luc Burette warned that if crews could not contain it, the fire risked spilling across the border a short distance to the east.

Two Belgian villages were partially evacuated, with around 20 residents spending the night in a sports hall, and the German town of Monschau advised people living closest to the front — at one point 1.8 kilometres from the first inhabited areas — to leave. Smoke reached the Belgian province of Namur and eastern France, where the Moselle department issued an air pollution alert. Interior Minister Bernard Quintin said two of the fire fronts, heading towards Jalhay and Monschau, were under control by Sunday.

The fens' terrain of heath, peat bogs and raised wooden boardwalks makes the operation unusually difficult: heavy vehicles risk sinking into the ground, so crews are relying on aerial support — two water-bombing aircraft that arrived from Sweden and four helicopters, two Belgian and two Dutch, including water-bearing Chinooks flown in from the Netherlands. Local farmers formed a shuttle of tractors hauling water tanks from a nearby lake; hotel manager Jean-Pierre Robert counted about 15 tractors queuing to fill up.

Belgium, like much of Europe, has been through a spell of intense heat and drought, with temperatures reaching 37 degrees Celsius in parts of the country on Friday. The reserve was ravaged by major fires in 1911 during a similar hot, dry period, and the current blaze is the country's largest since then. Rescue teams have not yet been able to reach the area where the fire started, so its cause remains unknown.