Hürtgenwald wildfire extinguished after forcing 1,800 people from their homes

Updated 26 August 2026, 14:00 CEST — Authorities have extinguished the wildfire that forced about 1,800 residents to evacuate Gey, in Germany’s Hürtgenwald municipality near the Belgian border, between 14 and 15 August. Hürtgenwald Mayor Stephan Cranen declared the fire extinguished on 21 August, while Belgian public broadcaster BRF reported that no residents or homes had been harmed.

The evacuation began before dawn on 14 August after a change in the wind drove the fire towards Gey. BRF, citing the municipality and police, reported that the flames had advanced to roughly 400 metres from the village when emergency services ordered residents to leave. The evacuation proceeded without reported incidents.

The Düren district administration said the fire then spread across about 300 hectares and developed into a mixture of ground and treetop fires. Its crisis team deployed firefighters, police, the German armed forces, civil-protection organisations and helicopters, while crews cut firebreaks to protect the village. Five emergency workers were injured during the operation, according to the district’s official incident record.

Residents received permission to return on the evening of 15 August after crews secured the edge of Gey. The district said two-thirds had returned by the following morning. Open flames had disappeared by 17 August, but firefighters continued tackling hotspots and monitoring the forest with infrared-equipped drones until the final all-clear.

The operation was complicated by unexploded Second World War ammunition in the forest. WDR reported that crews heard explosions during the fire and faced risks from buried mines and heat-triggered munitions, a legacy of the fierce fighting around Hürtgenwald in 1944 and 1945.

For Belgium, the immediate impact of this German fire remained limited: no Belgian evacuation was attributed to it. Its location close to East Belgium nevertheless made smoke, access restrictions and cross-border emergency coordination relevant to communities around Eupen and the Eifel. A separate, much larger fire was burning in Belgium’s High Fens

Place

High Fens

Belgian natural area where a simultaneous fire increased regional emergency pressure.

Why it matters

Belgian natural area where a simultaneous fire increased regional emergency pressure.

About

The High Fens, which were declared a nature reserve in 1957, are an upland area, a plateau region in Liège Province, in the east of Belgium and adjoining parts of northwestern Germany, between the Ardennes and the Eifel highlands. The High Fens are the largest nature reserve or park in Belgium, with an area of 4,501.2 ha ; it lies within the German-Belgian natural park Hohes Venn-Eifel, in the Ardennes.

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The Hürtgenwald fire is over, but access to the damaged forest remains restricted because fire-weakened trees are unstable, BRF reported. Authorities have not publicly established the cause, and the final environmental and financial damage assessments remain outstanding.