What does the departure of Genk’s firefighting aircraft reveal about Belgium’s wildfire readiness?

Aquarius Aerial Firefighting confirmed on 18 August that its four privately owned firefighting aircraft will leave Zwartberg airfield in Genk

Place

Genk

Flemish city whose airfield is losing the regular storage of the four aircraft.

Why it matters

Flemish city whose airfield is losing the regular storage of the four aircraft.

About

Genk is a municipality and city located in the Belgian province of Limburg near Hasselt. The municipality comprises only the town of Genk itself. It is one of the most important industrial towns in Flanders, located on the Albert Canal, between Antwerp and Liège.

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Place

Vienna

Expected new storage location for the aircraft and an existing location for heavier maintenance.

Why it matters

Expected new storage location for the aircraft and an existing location for heavier maintenance.

About

Vienna is the capital, most populous city, and one of the nine states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. Its larger metropolitan area has a population of nearly 2.9 million, representing nearly one-third of the country's population.

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That distinction became politically charged after the exceptional wildfire in the High Fens

Place

High Fens

Belgian region affected by the August 2026 wildfire that prompted an international assistance request.

Why it matters

Belgian region affected by the August 2026 wildfire that prompted an international assistance request.

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 four aircraft associated with Genk are AT-802 Fire Boss planes operated by Aquarius, a subsidiary of Luxembourg-based cargo group Cargolux. They can scoop water while moving across a suitable lake or other open-water surface and then drop it over a fire. VRT NWS reported when the Genk arrangement was announced in February 2025 that each aircraft could collect about 3,000 litres and that the intended role of Zwartberg included winter storage, light maintenance and pilot training.

They were nevertheless commercial aircraft, not assets bought, leased or placed on permanent standby by the Belgian state. Aquarius deployed them where it had operational contracts, including in southern Europe and Turkey. During the High Fens fire

Ketellapper told Het Nieuwsblad that moving storage to Vienna made commercial sense because heavy maintenance already took place there and the site is closer to important operating markets such as Turkey. He also said an Aquarius aircraft in Luxembourg had been readied after Belgium expressed interest during the High Fens emergency, but that the request was cancelled because the airspace above the fire was already becoming crowded. That account has not been independently documented in a Belgian government communiqué.

Federal Defence Minister and Minister of Foreign Trade Theo Francken of the New Flemish Alliance initially called the possible loss of the Genk base “unacceptable” if obstruction by local authorities had driven the decision. He said he would contact the Governor of Limburg and argued that Belgium should examine a future rental arrangement. His intervention gave the episode a national political dimension, although Defence is not the sole authority responsible for managing civilian wildfires.

Belgium’s division of responsibilities matters here. Municipal emergency services and the country’s fire-and-rescue zones lead the initial response. A governor coordinates during a provincial emergency phase, while the federal crisis machinery becomes involved when the scale demands it. The federal police and Defence can provide aircraft or other support after a request from the civil authorities. The Federal Public Service Home Affairs sets civil-security procedures, while access to particular lakes, canals or recreational waters can also involve municipal authorities and Flemish water or environmental bodies. The European Commission coordinates international offers when Belgium activates the EU mechanism.

The disagreement over water-scooping practice illustrates the institutional tangle. Frank De Paepe, president and head of training at the Koninklijke Limburgse Vleugels flying school, told Het Nieuwsblad that the lack of nearby authorisation to practise scooping had reduced Genk’s usefulness. Peter Nies, Mayor of Kinrooi, said his municipality had not objected in principle but had concerns about recreational activity and planned development around the gravel lakes. Other municipalities and the Flemish Environment Agency reportedly said they had not received equivalent requests concerning other suggested waters.

Aquarius presented a different emphasis. Ketellapper said the principal logic was operational efficiency: storage and maintenance could be combined in Vienna, while the aircraft spent much of the wildfire season outside Belgium anyway. He described Genk as a good location and maintained that training could continue there if customers requested it. The available reporting therefore does not establish that a single permit refusal forced the company out.

The aircraft’s departure is locally significant because Zwartberg loses a specialised aviation activity that had raised the airfield’s training profile. It is more consequential nationally as a correction to a public misconception: Belgium briefly hosted firefighting planes, but it did not own them and had no standing contract ensuring their availability. Their silhouettes on a Limburg apron looked like capacity; institutionally, they were only proximity.

Belgium’s established wildfire procedure instead relies on ground crews, Civil Protection resources, federal police helicopters and foreign reinforcement when domestic means are insufficient. The federal civil-security procedure states that foreign aerial support can be requested after a provincial or federal emergency phase is declared and must be integrated under specially trained air-operations coordination. This helps explain why adding another aircraft during an already crowded operation is not automatic.

The broader policy question in the current 2024-2029 federal and regional legislative cycle is whether increasingly severe fires justify a permanent Belgian aerial capability, a framework contract with private operators, greater helicopter capacity, or continued reliance on European pooling. Francken has favoured acquiring heavy-lift helicopters and announced work on a military fire-response plan, while the earlier position reported by VRT NWS from the Federal Public Service Home Affairs was that Belgium had too few protected scooping locations to justify buying its own firefighting planes and could rely on helicopters and European assistance.

Europe’s shared reserve remains substantial but finite. For the 2026 season, the European Commission placed 22 aircraft and five helicopters on standby across participating countries. Those assets can move to Belgium when available, yet simultaneous fires elsewhere can constrain the system. The Commission’s Joint Research Centre reported that the EU area burned by 12 August was already well above the 20-year average for that point in the season.

What happens next is therefore less about persuading four aircraft to remain parked in Genk than about defining what Belgium wants to purchase, reserve and train for. The federal government must decide whether it will negotiate an availability contract, reinforce helicopter-based capacity or rely primarily on rescEU. Limburg’s authorities and relevant water managers can separately clarify where safe scooping exercises would be permitted. Until those decisions are made, Aquarius remains a potential supplier, not Belgium’s airborne fire brigade.