Belgium’s largest wildfire exposes gaps experts flagged months earlier

Belgium’s federal government has promised a new resilience plan after the country’s largest recorded wildfire burned about 3,000 hectares in the Hautes Fagnes, where authorities brought the blaze under overall control on 20 August but warned that peat fires could smoulder and reignite. The response follows renewed scrutiny of a Belgian Wildfire Network assessment that had already called for urgent action, stronger aerial capacity and a more coherent national approach.

For residents, visitors and emergency workers in eastern Belgium, this is no longer an abstract climate-risk exercise. The fire began on 14 August and spread rapidly across difficult terrain near Eupen, Jalhay and the German border. According to the Belgian Defence Ministry, roughly 3,000 hectares were affected, while military firefighters and six Panther vehicles joined civilian crews. Forest access restrictions remained in force in the Verviers, Malmedy and Elsenborn districts as authorities protected the public and monitored hotspots.

The fire also demonstrated how quickly a Belgian emergency can become European. Belgium activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism on 15 August. The European Commission says two rescEU aircraft arrived from Sweden, alongside helicopters from the Netherlands, Germany and Norway, while Copernicus satellite imagery helped map the affected area. That assistance was operationally important, but it also sharpened the question raised by researchers: how much capacity should Belgium possess itself, and how much can it reasonably share at European level?

The Belgian Wildfire Network, created by researchers from Ghent University and the University of Liège, brought together scientists, firefighters, land managers and public authorities to identify national priorities. Its work describes fragmented responsibilities, limited specialist expertise, uneven public warnings and inadequate data as structural vulnerabilities. It also urges stronger aerial firefighting options. ULiège’s Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech said in April that longer droughts, changing land use and Belgium’s close overlap between natural and built-up areas were making large, difficult fires more plausible.

The warning was not based on one exceptional week. Belgium’s Climate Risk Assessment Centre, CERAC, reported in July that vegetation fires had become more frequent over several decades and that 71 had already been recorded in 2026. Its earlier assessment also found important gaps in Belgium’s historical data and future-risk estimates. The Hautes Fagnes themselves suffered a major fire in 2011, when the Walloon administration says approximately 1,200 hectares burned.

Researchers and firefighters therefore frame the disaster as evidence that prevention, mapping, training, coordination and equipment must evolve together. Marc Gilbert, president of the Royal Federation of Belgian Firefighters, has argued that European solidarity cannot compensate indefinitely for shortages of staff and domestic resources. The network’s central point is similarly institutional: Belgium lacks one integrated wildfire policy because authority, ownership and equipment are dispersed across federal, regional, provincial and local bodies.

Federal Interior Minister Bernard Quintin offers a more measured reading of the operation. Addressing parliament after the fire, he said that the crisis should accelerate resilience work and acknowledged a need for additional helicopter capacity, while maintaining that coordination on the ground had worked. The Walloon governing party MR has gone further, arguing that no shortage of personnel obstructed the response and that mutual assistance between rescue zones supplied the necessary reinforcements. It points to the regional crisis-management plan adopted in 2025, specialised procedures and training developed since 2011.

Those positions are not wholly incompatible. A response can function under extreme pressure while still revealing an unsustainable dependence on improvised reinforcements and foreign aircraft. The Commission describes wildfires as a growing European challenge and says the area burned across Europe by late July 2026 was already 2.5 times the usual level. The broader lesson is that countries once considered peripheral to Europe’s fire belt now need permanent preparedness, even while pooling expensive aircraft through rescEU.

The immediate investigation must still establish how the Hautes Fagnes fire started; officials have not announced a confirmed cause. Authorities must also measure the ecological damage to peatland, water systems and protected habitats. Attention will now turn to the promised federal resilience plan, the post-incident evaluation sought by ministers, and whether Belgium’s governments convert a well-documented warning into shared risk maps, large-scale exercises, clearer command arrangements and dependable aerial support before the next prolonged dry spell.