Residents evacuated, some 3,000 hectares charred, and a fire still not fixed: Belgium is still fighting, on Sunday August 16, one of the worst fires in its history.
“The conditions remain complex,” the Walloon authorities communicated on Sunday. “Despite their low intensity, the winds changed direction several times during the night,” they said in a press release.
“We don’t see anything anymore, there is smoke everywhere,” David Rodolfs, a restaurateur near Waimes, in the east of the country, lamented to AFP the day before.
“My colleagues saw the fire start yesterday. There were ashes falling on the tables, and then we asked our customers to leave, no dessert,” describes this 38-year-old man, describing the situation “extremely sad”.
The blaze ravages the Fagnes, a large wooded reserve in Belgium, popular with hikers and close to Germany.
The fire broke out there in the middle of the day on Friday and spread quickly.
From 80 hectares burned on Friday, it jumped to more than 2,700 on Saturday evening, according to a press release from local authorities.
The particular configuration of the terrain, very uneven, “makes the intervention particularly complex and does not allow the emergency services to attack the fire everywhere at very short distance with their usual means”, they specified.
The first residents in two villages were ordered to evacuate around 4 p.m. (1400 GMT), according to a message posted by local authorities on Facebook.
The gymnasium of a neighboring town, Malmedy, was made available to them.
“We are there to give them information, to meet primary needs, that is to say food, water, something to rest also for the most vulnerable people,” explains Romane Bouhaben, of the Belgian Red Cross, to AFP on site.
An AFP journalist escorted through the fire zone saw a vast expanse of charred vegetation, while a thick cloud of yellowed smoke still hung in the air.
The fire, not yet determined, is the biggest in recent Belgian history. A fire in 1911 also devastated the area.
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“Climate upheaval”
Belgium quickly activated the European civil protection mechanism in order to request human and material reinforcements across the continent.
A helicopter from the Netherlands is already helping out. Two more were to arrive on site in the evening, as well as two Swedish water bombers.
“They will be operational from tomorrow,” explained European Commissioner Hadja Lahbib, responsible in particular for preparedness and crisis management, to AFP, deploring the “climate upheaval” at work on the continent.
“Never has the fire season started so early in the year and so high up geographically,” she insisted.
On social networks, many farmers also photographed themselves en route to the scene of the fire to help the firefighters.
Interior Minister Bernard Quintin praised their “impressive” mobilization. “When we see how it was this morning and how it is now we can only be shocked,” he regretted to AFP.
Like a large part of Europe, Belgium has suffered from a new episode of high heat in recent days. The mercury rose as high as 37°C in some parts of the country on Friday.
This fire is only a few dozen kilometers as the crow flies from another blaze, in western Germany. This caused the evacuation of around 1,800 people on Friday, with the flames then very close to the first houses in the town of Hürtgenwald.
With AFP
