BAELEN, Belgium — Firefighters battled a massive wildfire that scorched a nature reserve in eastern Belgium and another on a Greek island near Athens where two people were killed Sunday as hot and dry conditions fueled fires across parts of Europe.
A blaze in eastern Belgium burned about 12 square miles in the High Fens, a large nature reserve, in one of the country’s worst wildfires in recent history.
About 600 residents in the nearby municipalities of Waimes and Buetgenbach, in Liege province near the German border, were told to evacuate Saturday as winds shifted and smoke spread through the area. Authorities also advised tourists to leave, while a nearby gymnasium was opened to receive evacuees.
Liege provincial Gov. Hervé Jamar said in a statement Sunday that more than 250 emergency personnel had been deployed, including over 100 Belgian and German firefighters, as well as police and military officers and civil protection staff. Firefighting helicopters operated by Belgium’s federal police and the Netherlands also helped.
In Greece, two people were killed in a wildfire Sunday on the island of Salamina, west of Athens, Greek firefighters said.
The bodies were recovered in the village of Peristeria, where strong winds fueled the rapidly spreading blaze. A second blaze was reported in the Selini area. Firefighting and coast guard vessels evacuated some 500 beachgoers in the area.
About 260 firefighters were responding to the blazes, including 15 ground teams, 10 aircraft and eight helicopters.
The island had been placed at high wildfire risk Sunday with near gale-force winds. “These conditions enabled the fire to quickly reach dangerous proportions and spread rapidly within seven minutes toward nearby residential areas,” Fire Brig. Gen. Vasileios Vathrakogiannis said.
The blaze now torching Belgium has far surpassed a 2011 fire that burned about 5.5 square miles in the same area and was previously the country’s largest wildfire on record, according to data from the European Forest Fire Information System.
Nicolas Yernaux, a spokesperson for the Public Service of Wallonia, said conditions are much worse this time. “We’re dealing with something much deeper because we have very dry soil,” he said.
René Dahmen, chief engineer at the Department of Nature and Forest, said the fire was still spreading Sunday in an area that was difficult for crews to reach.
“On the eastern flank, there’s a line at least a kilometer long where the fire is slowly advancing toward a municipal forest,” Dahmen said. “That’s the first priority now.”
Interior Minister Bernard Quintin said on X that firefighters managed to keep the fire from spreading toward the west and toward the German town of Monschau.
In Germany, local authorities warned Sunday that the fire was about a mile from the border.
Farmers from Belgium and Germany filled up tanker trucks, pumping water from a nearby lake before heading toward the fire area to help firefighters.
Belgium activated the European Union’s civil protection mechanism to receive assistance from other countries, EU Commissioner Hadja Lahbib, who is in charge of crisis management, said on X.
“The High Fens are burning. Belgium is not facing it alone,” Lahbib said. Sweden sent two water-dropping aircraft, while three helicopters — two from the Netherlands and one from the Czech Republic — also were being deployed.
The fire comes after weeks of unusually hot and dry weather. The High Fens’ mix of heathland and peat bogs has complicated efforts to contain the flames.
Belgium was hit by another spell of intense heat this week, with temperatures reaching about 99 degrees in parts of the country Friday.
In France, firefighters battling a wildfire in a pine forest in the southwestern Landes region faced no major flare-ups overnight, Landes Prefect Gilles Clavreul said. Authorities estimated the total area burned at 6.6 square miles, while about 650 people had been evacuated from their homes.
It was the third major wildfire in the vast pine forests of southwestern France this summer after two others in late July. A massive wildfire in the neighboring Gironde department burned about 162 square miles and forced the evacuation of about 220,000 people as it spread toward the Atlantic coast and the Bordeaux area.
In the United Kingdom, emergency crews were fighting 14 wildfires in South Wales with the support of military personnel. Authorities warned that although the heat wave is easing, drought conditions mean the risk of wildfires remains high.
Fires gutted more than a dozen homes in the West Midlands in central England last week as officials recorded the hottest day of the year Thursday, when temperatures exceeded 100 degrees.
In Germany, firefighters made significant progress against a wildfire in the Huertgen Forest, allowing about 2,000 evacuated residents of Gey to return home Saturday. Officials said Sunday that there were no open flames and that crews had established a cleared cordon around the affected area to prevent the fire from spreading.
Corbet and Nassiri write for the Associated Press. Corbet reported from Paris. AP writers Sylvia Hui in London, Geir Moulson in Berlin and Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy, contributed to this report.
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