The fire burning in the Hautes Fagnes, the peat bogs, heath and woodland of Belgium's German-speaking eastern cantons, is the largest in the country's recent history. It has taken about 3,000 hectares of vegetation so far and thrown up enough smoke to sit over the whole region — far enough that it has been smelled across the border in Moselle, in north-eastern France.
Two things changed on Monday. The German army made two helicopters fitted with water tanks available to Belgium, and the rain arrived.
Until then the ground had been the problem rather than the weather. The fire is in wooded, badly broken terrain, and crews have not been able to get close to the flames. Peat is the reason a fire like this does not simply go out: it burns downward into the soil and can keep going under a surface that looks extinguished.
Why it is on the board
It was the third most-read story on 20 Minutes in France on Monday, and 20 Minutes ran it as a French story rather than a foreign one — the smoke crossing into Moselle is in the second paragraph. The fire itself is in Belgium and the aircraft are German.
확인: 20 Minutes · AFP