The European Union deployed three helicopters and two water bomber aircraft to tackle a wildfire raging in eastern Belgium on Saturday, the bloc’s crisis commissioner said, after Belgium requested emergency reinforcements to control its biggest blaze in decades.
The wildfire in the High Fens, Belgium’s largest nature reserve, has been burning since Friday, with local firefighters, farmers and the army deployed to battle the blaze.
By early Saturday afternoon, it had burned 1,600 hectares, local media reported, citing statistics from the governor of Liege, the local province.
That would make the fire the biggest on record in Belgium, surpassing a blaze in 2011 which burned nearly 1,400 hectares, data from the European Forest Fire Information System showed.
European countries including Belgium suffered their fifth heatwave of the summer this week, fuelling the hot and dry conditions that support wildfires. Scientists have confirmed h uman-caused climate change is increasing the “fire-prone” weather conditions that allow wildfires to spread faster and burn longer.
