Belgium battles 3,000-hectare High Fens wildfire with European air support

Blaze spreads across the High Fens

The wildfire broke out on Friday, 14 August 2026, in the High Fens nature reserve in Wallonia, burning through peatland around Noir Flohay and near the Signal de Botrange, the highest point in Belgium at nearly 700 metres. By Monday, 17 August, the flames had burned roughly 3,000 hectares along the border with Germany. Ground crews faced difficult terrain that prevented motorised firefighting vehicles from entering protected peat bogs, where fire burned deep into the soil. Although rainfall and changing wind patterns slowed the forward movement of the blaze on Monday, authorities noted that the perimeter was not yet contained, with an inaccessible eastern front remaining active.

International containment effort

Belgium activated the European Union Civil Protection Mechanism to secure aerial assistance from across Europe. Air operations began late on Monday afternoon after low cloud cover cleared from the plateau. The aerial fleet included two helicopters from Germany, two from Norway, two from the Belgian Federal Police, one Dutch Chinook helicopter, and two firefighting planes from Sweden. On the ground, approximately 500 personnel, including Belgian soldiers, local farmers, and German reinforcement firefighters, worked alongside 120 federal and local police officers deployed daily to secure the perimeter.

René Dahmen, cantonment chief at the Department of Nature and Forests in Elsenborn, described the operational timeline for bringing the perimeter under control:

Today, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, we hope that the fire will be fixed.

Cross-border operations and evacuations

Across the border in Germany, 240 emergency responders from fire services, the Technical Relief Agency, emergency medical services, and police mobilized in Monschau, North Rhine-Westphalia. The fire line sat roughly 2.3 kilometres from the German border on Monday evening. On Sunday night, authorities evacuated 30 residents from the border village of Monschau-Kalterherberg due to smoke risks, though officials confirmed no additional evacuations were planned. Tobias Schell, spokesperson for the Monschau fire department, outlined the overnight requirements for emergency teams:

We must in any case operate here all night and keep areas clear for ourselves.

In Belgium, approximately 600 people evacuated over the weekend. Around 500 residents from the village of Sourbrodt, who had stayed two nights in a sports facility in Waimes, received permission to return to their homes on Monday night. An additional 100 evacuated residents from Bütgenbach awaited return clearances.

Peat soil challenges and European context

Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin stated that extinguishing the subsurface peat fires and soaking the terrain will take weeks to prevent rekindling. The High Fens blaze coincides with severe wildfire activity across southern and central Europe, where the European Forest Fire Information System recorded 576,027 hectares burned across the continent through 12 August 2026. Spain accounted for 265,457 hectares of that total, while German firefighters brought a separate 300-hectare blaze in the Eifel region under control on Monday.