Three thousand hectares burnt in the High Fens, evacuations still in force

The fire burning since Friday in the High Fens, in eastern Belgium, has swept through around three thousand hectares of vegetation. Two of the active fronts, the one towards Jalhay and the one towards the German town of Monschau, have been brought under control. Several hotspots are still alight and the evacuations have not been lifted.

The main front stretches about a kilometre. At points it lies a kilometre and a half from the German border and 1.8 kilometres from the nearest inhabited area. Local authorities in Monschau consider it unlikely that the fire will reach Germany, but expect a heavy concentration of smoke. The plume was noticeable more than a hundred kilometres away, as far as the French Moselle.

The villages of Sourbrodt, Leykaul and Küschelscheid remain evacuated. Civil protection teams, police, soldiers and farmers with their own machinery are working on site. The Belgian defence forces have deployed six Panther firefighting vehicles and nineteen military firefighters.

Dutch helicopters and Swedish aircraft

The aircraft come from other European countries. Two Dutch Chinook helicopters are carrying out water drops, supported by two Swedish firefighting planes. This is the European civil protection mechanism at work, the same one Switzerland has joined and through which operations in Greece and Spain were coordinated in recent weeks.

The High Fens are a plateau of peat bogs and heathland, ground that once dry burns deep down and is hard to put out. The last fire of comparable size dates back to 1911: 3,900 hectares burnt then and the fire stayed active for two months. Peat can keep smouldering below the surface even after the visible flames have been extinguished, which is why crews stay on site long after the emergency is declared over.