Rain brings respite as Belgium wrestles massive wildfire
France, Greece, Portugal and Spain were also battling major fires over the weekend.
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France, Greece, Portugal and Spain were also battling major fires over the weekend.
BEIJING, China (AFP) — Much-needed rain brought some respite Monday to firefighters on their fourth day battling Belgium’s worst wildfire in a century, which has scorched vast expanses of nature reserve on the German border.
Europe has been swept by weeks of devastating wildfires fuelled by dry conditions and a historically hot summer that has already contributed to the deaths of thousands of people.
France, Greece, Portugal and Spain were also battling major fires over the weekend.
In Belgium, currently the continent’s most urgent fire front, around 500 firefighters and emergency crews have mobilized to contain the blaze, which broke out Friday for reasons still unknown in the High Fens park, an area of boggy peatlands, pine forests and hiking trails.
Water-bombing aircraft and farmers’ tractors have joined forces to help tame the fire, which as of Sunday had spread to 3,000 hectares — an area half the size of Manhattan.
But Tony Hosmans, a crisis management spokesperson, told reporters Monday the blaze was no longer advancing towards the German border — after creeping nearer over the weekend, prompting an evacuation order in the border town of Monschau.
The rain falling Monday on the area —with more forecast on and off throughout the week — was a welcome development.
“The wind is favorable and the current rainfall is helping to contain the spread” of the fire, said Hosmans.
“At present, the fire is contained wherever intervention is possible,” he said — although he cautioned it had not yet been brought under control, with an aerial reconnaissance mission due to deliver a fuller picture later in the day.
The blaze broke out in an area that was ravaged by massive fires in 1911, during a similar period of heatwaves and drought.
It is the country’s largest wildfire since.
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.
The smoke hazard has triggered the evacuation of two Belgian villages, whose residents were still under instruction to stay away.
Firefighter killed
A Spanish soldier died on Sunday while helping efforts to extinguish a major wildfire in the northeastern region of Aragon when his truck tumbled into a ravine, authorities said.
The army’s Military Emergencies Unit (UME) confirmed “with deep pain” the loss of its soldier fighting the fire, which has raged for a week and threatened a 1,000-year-old monastery.
The central government’s top representative in the regional capital Zaragoza, Noelia Herrero, said the accident struck in the Atares ravine near Mount Oroel, a locally emblematic peak located in an area of rugged terrain with narrow roads.
Three other occupants of the fire engine were rushed to hospital with injuries of varying severity, the regional government said in a statement.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez expressed “all my love and my solidarity with the family and colleagues” of the victim on X, saying “we are constantly indebted” to the emergency services.
Like its European neighbors, Spain has suffered several spells of extreme summer heat, contributing to ideal conditions for a string of wildfires.
