A wildfire burning through Belgium's High Fens nature reserve has consumed more than 27 square kilometers since breaking out Friday in Liege province, making it the largest fire in Belgian recorded history and prompting evacuations within kilometers of the German border.
The European Forest Fire Information System confirmed the blaze has already nearly doubled Belgium's previous record, a 2011 fire that burned 14 square kilometers in the same reserve. The fire has been spreading east since Friday, and by Sunday morning authorities had not yet contained the advancing front.
More than 250 emergency services personnel are deployed across the fire zone, drawn from Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Stephanie Ernoux, spokesperson for the Wallonia regional government, said crews are focused on holding the advancing front rather than extinguishing the blaze entirely.
About 600 residents of the Belgian border municipalities of Waimes and Butgenbach were ordered to leave their homes Saturday after winds shifted and drove smoke into populated areas. Authorities said no homes had been destroyed as of Sunday morning but urged the public to stay out of the fire zone.
The fire has come within roughly three kilometers of the German border. The town of Monschau, on the German side, said it did not expect flames to cross the border but advised residents in three of its districts to evacuate temporarily because of smoke. German officials did not issue a broader emergency alert.
The fire broke out as Belgium came through a severe heat episode that pushed temperatures to roughly 37 degrees Celsius on Friday—about 98.6 Fahrenheit—after weeks with minimal rainfall. The combination of dry conditions and intense heat created fire conditions across the peatland and heathland terrain of the High Fens, a protected natural area spanning the Belgian-German border region.
Belgium is not alone. Weather agencies recorded temperatures above 35 degrees Celsius across several European countries on Thursday. In the United Kingdom, west London reached 38.1 degrees Celsius on Friday, the hottest day of the year in Britain. Wildfires have followed the heat in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Croatia and Greece in recent days, with thousands of people evacuated across those countries.
Across the European Union as a whole, about 500,000 hectares have burned this year—roughly 1.24 million acres—placing this among the most destructive fire seasons on record for the continent.
The High Fens reserve is a raised bog ecosystem, one of the largest in Central Europe, and its peat-heavy soil makes fires there particularly difficult to extinguish. Peat can smolder underground for days or weeks after surface flames are suppressed, meaning containment does not equal full suppression. Firefighters from four countries are working the perimeter in coordinated fashion, but the terrain and dry subsurface conditions extend the timeline for fully securing the area.
Authorities in Wallonia have not given a timeline for when residents of Waimes and Butgenbach will be allowed to return. The wind direction, which shifted Saturday and drove the evacuation order, remains a key variable in how quickly the eastern front advances toward the German border.
