Rainfall in eastern Belgium is helping firefighters contain the country’s largest wildfire on record after the blaze threatened to spread towards the German border.
Belgium’s weather agency, IRM, forecast between five and nine millimetres of rain in the High Fens nature reserve, where the fire has been burning since Friday.
The rainfall, coupled with lower temperatures, is expected to improve firefighting efforts after last week’s heatwave pushed temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius in parts of the country.
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“This will change everything; in addition to the water associated with rainfall, there will also be an increase in humidity levels,” Fire Department Captain Olivier Guist told Belgian broadcaster RTBF.
Belgian authorities said the wildfire was no longer advancing towards Germany and had been partly contained, although evacuated residents had not yet been cleared to return to their homes.
About 500 firefighters, supported by emergency teams from Germany and Luxembourg, as well as the Belgian army and local farmers, have been battling the blaze.
The fire has destroyed about 3,000 hectares of moorland, peatland and woodland in the High Fens reserve, more than double the size of Belgium’s previous largest wildfire recorded in 2011.
The European Union has deployed three helicopters and two water-bombing aircraft to assist firefighting operations after Belgium requested emergency support.
The wildfire is among a series of major fires affecting Europe this summer following successive heatwaves and prolonged dry conditions.
Data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) show that wildfires have burned about 576,000 hectares across Europe this year, an area roughly twice the size of Luxembourg.
Over the weekend, an elderly couple died as wildfires swept through Greece’s Salamina Island, forcing about 500 people to evacuate by ferry after flames threatened residential areas.
In Spain, a wildfire in the northeastern region of Aragon destroyed about 16,600 hectares of land, while a blaze in the Croatian coastal town of Omis forced around 1,000 people to flee their homes.
Despite cooler conditions in Belgium, EFFIS data indicate that large parts of western, southern and central Europe remain at high risk of wildfires.
Experts say increasingly hot and dry conditions linked to climate change, combined with the accumulation of unmanaged vegetation, have heightened wildfire risks across the continent.
Europe recorded its worst wildfire season last year, with more than one million hectares of land destroyed by fires, and several countries have already exceeded their annual fire records this year even though the traditional fire season is still ongoing.
Reuters
