Baelen fire, August 2026 Waimes, Baelen, Jalhay
The fire started on 14 August 2026 in Baelen, Belgium, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,655 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.
The only fire in Belgium with a page in 2026.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,655ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 14 Aug 2026 – 14 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- municipalities
- Started on
- 14 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 472
- in a single hotspot: 65 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.4GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.4 mm on 18 Aug.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,303 ha reached on 15 Aug13 %
-
Baelen where it started1,122 ha reached on 14 Aug13 %
-
219 ha reached on 15 Aug2.0 %
-
8 ha0.1 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
What burned
- Other natural land80 %
- Coniferous forest14 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland3.5 %
- Mixed forest1.4 %
- Broadleaved forest1.2 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 94 %
- ZEPA + LIC Plateau des Hautes-Fagnes BE33035C0
- ZEPA + LIC Vallée de la Helle BE33024C0
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Aug | 32.9 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 15 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 28 % | 27 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 Aug after | 24.5 °C | 45 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 17 Aug after | 18.7 °C | 67 % | 36 km/h | 4.9 mm | Very low 1 |
| 18 Aug after | 15.9 °C | 87 % | 45 km/h | 7.4 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 18 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 1,567 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 483: 32 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 472Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Baelen fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 14 August 2026 and 14 August 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,655 hectares (26.6 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Waimes (1,303 ha, 13 %); Baelen (1,122 ha, 13 %); Jalhay (219 ha, 2.0 %); Bütgenbach (8 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Belgium (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Emergency number: 112
Satellite cross-check
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 472 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM4 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.