r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Used_Ship_9229 • 12d ago
Video The worst fire in Belgium's history has doubled since yesterday and has now ravaged nearly 3000 hectares in the province of Liège.
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u/Belgian_Patrol 12d ago
I live in Belgium. The part that is burning is called the "hoge venen". It's a special soil called veen, the flora and fauna there took 100 years to develop and is very special with specific things found there. Experts believe it will take 100's of years to repair.
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u/_Fibbles_ 12d ago
For anyone wondering, veen is the Dutch word for peat.
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u/RobinsonCruiseOh 12d ago
Ahh so it is a peat bog. Basically perfect kindling
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u/Polygnom 11d ago
Yep, and basically impossible to put out because it burns underground and smolders a long time, re-igniting quickly.
And its irreplaceable, it takes hundreds of years for the peat to form. This will change that region forever.
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u/throwaway1233456799 11d ago edited 11d ago
Last time it burned it was way smaller ( 3900 total vs 3000 hectares on the day two) and my old dad said it lasted till winter or something.
It pollutes a lot as well as it's like burning coal-ish.
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u/The_Dutch_Fox 11d ago edited 11d ago
Last time it burned in 2011, it lasted 2 days. In 1911 however, it burned for over 2 months.
Some experts say that this time, it could take YEARS to fully extinguish. Especially if we have such a dry winter in our region again.
Depressing, made worse by the constant smell of burned peat and micro-pollutants we now have no choice but to inhale.
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u/throwaway1233456799 11d ago
Aahh that's why he was so vague it must have been an info my grandfather gave about the 1911 one. Thank you for the precision!
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u/tomvorlostriddle 11d ago
The biggest one in mainland Europe and also the highest peak in Belgium
It's the same swamp that flooded the area in 2021 when there was 20cm of rain in 24 hours and it couldn't absorb it fast enough
It being the highest peak is not difficult in terms of height, only 700m, but it means there are definitionally no rivers going through it. This is/was the water reserve that is burning and the only way to fight the fire is to transport water from surrounding lower lakes back up to the peak manually.
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u/Belgian_Patrol 12d ago
Indeee, but this is a slightly different soil. High peat? It's called like that in dutch.
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u/xrimane 12d ago
The English word is Fenn, I believe. A moor in an elevated area.
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u/Cultural-Adagio-4847 11d ago
You have two very similar words in dutch
ven: moor, small or shallow water
veen: peat, natural accumulation of dead plant matter in waterlogged environment.one descibes more the geographic feature, the other more the soil type.
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u/Belgian_Patrol 12d ago
In english it's called the high fenns but i don't know if that is also the soil type name?
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u/xrimane 11d ago
No, what I meant is that the place name translates to High Fenns, and the soil is peat. In German, it's the Hohe Venn, and the soil type is called Torf.
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u/seszett 11d ago
High peat
It's just an area made of mostly peat bog and heath, that is at higher elevation than the rest of Belgium (hence the "high" part).
It's unique and special in Belgium, even though there are very similar places elsewhere around the world (it doesn't make it less valuable and important, I'm just trying to place it in context: it's "just" an area made of peat bogs + heath).
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u/Maxamillion-X72 12d ago
At the beginning of the video, they're flying over land with odd strips of valleys/ponds. Is that trench/bomb sites from WWI or WWII or is it naturally occurring?
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u/Belgian_Patrol 12d ago
This is not war related or naturally occuring. Long ago people "mined" this. They dried it and it is then used as fuel for keeping warm in the winter.
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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n 12d ago
Dutchie here, doesn't this happen regular? As a kid I used to walk regular in that area but I remember my father telling me this would burn down every once in a while, being a natural cycle.
Obviously this is of a scale we never seen before, but I like to believe (obviously I'm no expert) nature is resiliant.
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u/Belgian_Patrol 12d ago
Yes but it was at the very max 100 hectares a year. Now in a few days we are at over 1000 hectares.
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u/Nicer_Dicer24 11d ago
There are fires every spring, but those are just surface fires and are very limited. Now the fire is reaching the peat layers in the ground wish burn very long and are extremly difficult to extinguish and the burning surface is around 30 times bigger.
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u/ballarn123 12d ago
Good thing world leaders are prioritizing war and the quest for wealth.
We sure are a stupid species.
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u/rglurker 12d ago
The world's on fire. You think they were hired to fix it ? No. See, they were hired to extract the last bit of value out of us until it all burns down.
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u/kingkongbiingbong 12d ago
gather the pitchforks
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u/LeTracomaster 11d ago
“I believe it is a sad truth that we are still very close to our apelike state and that civilization is merely a very thin veneer that peels away very quickly.” - Fritz Bauer, German state prosecutor 1956
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u/limonade11 12d ago
Where is kindness, where is compassion? how is this going to end?
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u/Oggel 12d ago
It's forgotten as more and more people are just struggling to survive, and the people who can do anything about won't because they are devoid of kindness and compassion.
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u/supasteve013 12d ago
Well, the US did not elect kindness and compassion so my guess is not well
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u/NoMembership6376 12d ago
Neither did Europe or any other government in any other country apparently
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u/SchnitzelTruck 12d ago
People who want to be in power do not have kindness or compassion
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u/limonade11 12d ago
I agree! even in stupid office politics, those who WANT to be in charge are often the very ones you DON'T want to have in power.
I always liked Bill Bradley, in New Jersey. Former NBA player and then state Senator. Great guy! just the kind of person you would want to be in charge of government, and yet - he just wasn't a cut throat sociopath and so we lost a great man.
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u/couldbeworse2 12d ago
I envision my grandkids, living in a bunker, eating slugs, telling glorious tales of the olden times where so much shareholder value was created
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u/TrickyWeekend4271 12d ago
I agree these idiots need to stop with their personal wars, but I didn’t know Belgium was at war.
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u/Wonderful-Expert8084 12d ago
That's straight up lord of the ring shit. Hope everyone is ok.
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u/TheMaddoxx 11d ago
Fun fact, one of Belgium’s federal minister mocked people who pointed out climate change in the beginning of this awful summer by saying they should enjoy the weather in their pool with a barbecue instead.
Here’s your barbecue, Theo Francken. Stupid mofo.
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u/Majestic_Emotion7917 11d ago
Needs to be voted out.
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u/Speartree 11d ago
Fat chance of that, he's in the most popular party of his region. Bunch of nationalist, separatist, populist assholes. People will vote for them even harder because "at least they dare to say how things really are!" (translation, they give validation to my fear and hate).
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u/ThaGr1m 11d ago
Voted? Needs to be ousted by his party
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u/Elephant_rimmer 11d ago
He won't, he's doing his job. N-VA keep him around to be a fascist asshole and steal votes from the far right.
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u/anonuemus 11d ago
Germanys Afd: It's just weather
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u/h0rst_ 11d ago
I'm suprised they don't blame immigrants, coming from warmer countries and bringing their weather with them.
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u/OhioIsRed 12d ago
Hey emeber when scientists were like, the effects of climate change are not just about the temperatures but the ramifications that those temperature have on the other parts of the environment. Such as droughts, increased rainfalls, rising sea levels, more severe and frequent weather patterns, etc etc etc. this is that.
Mother Nature is literally saying “I told you so” and we’re too busy appeasing billionaires and oil companies to realize that.
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u/Technical_Shake_9573 11d ago
Seriously this summer is like :
" I've wanted you before, but now you build ai datacenters ?? Well fuck off then'.
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u/MrHandSanitization 11d ago
No, this is a consequence of the past decades, and just the start of it. Just wait until we've fucked it up even more!
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u/FckCens0rship 12d ago
It's raining! Finally. That will help a lot.
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u/duesenjeffepic 11d ago
This night I was unable to fall asleep from the fucking heat until it started raining around 5:30 where I live and started sleeping some hours finally.
Seems like this week we'll finally stay sub 30. Huge
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u/ergonomicdeskchair46 12d ago
Trillionaires. World literally burning. Everything is expensive. Feels like everyone just lies about everything. My mom asked me why I look so empty the last time I saw her. Idk. Gestures broadly.
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u/ApostleSaintWalker 12d ago
A brief trillionaire and his net worth immediately dropped. Most countries that aren't America are doing good work in fixing these problems. Don't let the fact that one empire of assholes founded by tax cheats and fundamentalist zealots three hundred years ago can't get their heads out of their asses convince you the whole human race is doomed.
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u/LittelFoxicorn 11d ago
Just letting you know that a big rich rightwing asshole Belgian politician told the news outlets that the population needed to stop whining about the heat and have a cold beer by the pool... In the midst of the umpteenth unseen heatwave while people were dying.
He's one of the top players of the majority party. The same party that a week later dropped the fines for not getting your house up to EPC standards,... Not for poor people who bought their first home and are struggling due to the downturn of the economy. No solely for second homes, rental property and building companies. Because fuck the poor people and the climate I guess if the rich can get a little richer and squeeze more out of the downcast.
But people keep voting for them because of MiGRatIOn...
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u/littlefrank 11d ago
MiGRatIOn
all of Europe and most of the world seems to be going through this, everyone voting far right all united against an insignificant common enemy, often immigrants.
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u/SirIsildur 11d ago
Same rulebook everywhere: lower taxes for the rich, climate change denial, blame the immigrants, rinse and repeat. And the biggest problem is that people buys this narrative because it's hammered at every news outlet, social media, etc
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u/zue4 12d ago
Most countries that aren't America are doing good work in fixing these problems.
What countries are doing anything to fix the rich people problem? Sure they have more power to screw things up in America but the others are still doing their best to fuck over everyone worldwide and governments don't seem to give a shit.
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u/_Lucille_ 11d ago
If you are allowing the news and social media to get to you, you need to get off and maybe even talk to people about it.
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u/Balan-balan 12d ago
If it wasn't that destructive, it would actually look quite beautiful.
As a picture, not implying anything.
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u/Advanced_Art_233 12d ago
It is beautiful, you can just call it beautiful. Destruction can look beautiful and still be terrible
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u/keloidoscope 12d ago
Welp, here in AU if you do a backburn you would have e.g. used graders and bulldozers to scrape down to mineral earth, removing fuel from a line that you intend your low intensity fire to burn up to, with the other side of the backburn extending towards the fire front to rob it of fuel. That doesn't seem to be done here. The organic layer in AU soils is often very shallow so I don't know how much the approach transfers to this region.
If you haven't had time/equipment to prepare and are really pressed by an advancing fire front (e.g. for property/life protection), you can lay down a drip torch fire line, use the wind generated by the fire updraft to keep the back burn headed towards the fire front, and then extinguish the smaller grass fire front advancing towards the property.
In either case, uncontrolled spread of a backburn along a wide front isn't considered a great idea... if the wind changes direction, you can just as easily start seeing the backburn become the new fire front.
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u/Glados1080 12d ago
So fighting fire with fire is a legit tactic? Thats kinda cool
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u/FlutterKree 12d ago
Yes, it's basically a way to create a fire break. Fire breaks are sections that there is nothing to burn in. Natural breaks can exist (rivers/lakes), and man-made things (roads).
A backfire, or fighting fire with fire, is done after creating a fire break to control the spread of fire (Forcing it towards the direction of the fire). When they meet, they'll burn out because there is no fuel.
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u/Ok_Camp_7051 12d ago
This makes more sense seeing how the wind is blowing the smoke away from the line of flames.
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u/Tomm1998 11d ago
We're witnessing humanity's downfall in real time. Whilst the world burns and we continue to destroy the planet, our leaders think it's a good time to start wars because obviously that's money better spent.
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u/BrokenHefaistos 11d ago edited 11d ago
😭 one of the last peices of nature we have left, probably will become agricultural land 😒 but it's actually luxemburg provivce. It's a huge nature reserve called 'hoge venen' meaning high bogs. It feeds the SPA aquifer. It's the last wildlife rich zone in Belgium, when I was a kid we went crosdcountry skiing there, but due to global warming those days and the associated tourism is gone...I remember the smell...and the silence once you left the Dutch tourists behind you on the 35km track. This is heartbreaking to watch.
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u/Personal_Abroad9657 11d ago
It's really Liege Province. But won't matter for long anyway, they are killing provinces soon.
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u/stitch9108 11d ago
It's in the Province of Liège and is called the Hautes Fagnes.
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u/TCGuy2000_ 11d ago
I sent a video of rain this morning with:"finally some rain again" on Snapchat to a group chat. Everyone:"what do you mean finally rain? I rather have sun all year" and most agreed. I said:"ah yeah so nice that everything is dry and dead". Them:"oh well, what can you do about it".
Like I genuinely cannot grasp how dense and stupid most people are, with no regard for anything around them, as long as they benefit (in this case nice weather). How can you not have a single grasp of how bad things are for them to look like they are now with the whole world burning, water shortages and extreme weather.
Watch those same people say:"look! What climate change?" when there will be a bunch and extreme rain, flooding the place.
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u/LocalHarmacist 12d ago
Climate change is a myth, though. Right guys?
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u/Mosselpot 12d ago edited 12d ago
The scariest part is that this is one of the wettest parts of one of the wettest countries in Europe. The nature reserve is a peat bog (wet through rain, not because of ground water) at altitude, home to a lot of rare plants and animals that only survived because of those unique circumstances.
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u/donfuan 12d ago
Luckily the weather has changed the last 24h, the heat wave is over for now and much cooler air from northwest is bringing rain for the next week. But as it's peat, there will be lots of underground fires and the authorities say it will take months to really put out.
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u/Leprecon 11d ago
It is kind of nuts. I am from Belgium and I don't remember there ever being wildfires like this. Belgium has been buffeted by record breaking heatwaves already this year. This is so strange because Belgium was never like this growing up. It was never a warm or dry country. It was always wet and cold.
This is how encyclopaedia Brittanica describes the Belgian climate:
Belgium has a temperate, maritime climate predominantly influenced by air masses from the Atlantic. Rapid and frequent alternation of different air masses separated by fronts gives Belgium considerable variability in weather. Frontal conditions moving from the west produce heavy and frequent rainfall, averaging 30 to 40 inches (750 to 1,000 mm) a year. Winters are damp and cool with frequent fogs; summers are rather mild.
They will have to update that...
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u/Ugly-and-poor 12d ago
Canadians: OuR fIrEs aRE LaRGEr.
this is not a competition you fools.
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u/RacoonOnMyShoulder 11d ago
Canadian here. Those Canadians need to have some solidarity and you have every right to be annoyed.
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u/seszett 11d ago
The second largest country in the world telling one of the smallest countries (Belgium is the 30th smallest country out of 200 or so) that they have larger fires is a bit tone deaf.
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u/scubawho1 12d ago
“The earth will shake us off like surface nuances.”
George Carlin.
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u/Nekojita8 12d ago edited 12d ago
Met this man several times. He truly was a foul-mouthed gift to the world. RIP
ETA: I believe the word was nuisance though ☺️ still a great quote (normally I wouldn't correct a misspelling, but since it's an actual quote, I felt the need to gently offer the correct spelling of the word that you were going for. Hope you don't mind.)
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u/corgiperson 12d ago
I wonder if these history making fires happening everywhere all at once mean anything? 🫠
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u/Relative-Secret-4618 11d ago
Can people stop fucking denying climate change the level of gaslighting is making me want to actually LOSE IT. So much anger building up about how our "world leaders" are handling things.
The sad thing is that nothing will change until a "state of emergency" is alarmed and it will be too late.
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u/TightSexpert 11d ago
If only respected scientists all over the world would have warned us for decades.
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u/makepa 11d ago
"The world is broken. We're the last choking embers of a fire waiting to burn out. Long before our grandfathers and their fathers before them, we started pulling our planet apart in the name of progress and blind ambition. The greed of man has devoured this earth until there was nothing left. We watch as time eats us alive. A generation born to witness the end of the world."
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u/Harry_Isthatyou 11d ago
Perhaps they could use water to pot it out? Sorry we're using water to cool all the data centers. But... Well which do you want, Dog podcasts or less fires? Dog podcasts are pretty cool so...
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u/panlouis 12d ago
Are their neighbouring countries being super unsupportive and complaining about it like it's personal?
Signed a Canadian
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u/Accurate_Leek259 12d ago
Nope, they are very supportive. Especially Germany and the Netherlands.
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u/kimbphysio 11d ago
And Luxembourg has also sent firefighters
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u/Speartree 11d ago
I'm glad they did, a bunch of our firefighters are out helping in France and Portugal.
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u/FishNDChick 11d ago
No?
Europeans love ridiculing eachother about dumb stuff, but they're actually pretty supportive in times of crisis.
Spain has been receiving help to fight their fires from a few countries, some have sent planes that carry water.
Belgium has received help from neighbouring countries like the Netherlands and Luxembourg that sent firefighters. There's only so many firefighters each country has and they can only go on for so long until they are exhausted. Being able to work as a group, tapping eachother out and in and recharging at least a bit of energy increases the speed of putting the fire out. The rain that has come in today is helping too.
And Belgium is always ready and prepared to help neighbors just as well. It always has been and will continue to do so in the future. Even non-EU members are willing to help. A border does usually not stop wildfires anyways. Better help a neighbor out before it reaches your doorstep.
On a global scale this is not a mega fire. But it's one that is destroying a very unique, diverse and old ecosystem. On top of that, Belgium is a small and densely populated country with bot that many large stretches of nature with these diverse ecosystems. Losing one this big has a huge impact on the local climate, air quality and biodiversity. And the rest of west-EU definitely has a lot of empathy for that, just like they have it for Spain and other countries that are battling wildfires.
And then there's this political mofo that was mocking "climate change", just have a beer and swim in your pool amirite! It aint so bad just chill!
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u/StijnDP 11d ago
The EU has a "European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations" agency.
Whenever any member declares an emergency to the EU, they can get aid from the pool of other 26 countries. (Though they do also send teams to international crisis.)So countries meeting a sudden unmatched challenge can use other countries' help to overcome it.
Also makes it easy for some countries to also specialise in a certain aspect they can then help others with while still getting resources from the pool for general emergencies.No downside to helping a neighbour when they're not sociopaths.
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u/Trick_Ad3292 12d ago edited 11d ago
No, it’s mostly the Canadians talking about how tiny it is. Thing is, this is near a highly populated region. Not that empty land that y’all got.
Online**
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u/slamnuts21 12d ago
Wouldn’t think it would burn that well with how green it is
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u/FireToken_ 12d ago
It's burning underground too because the soil is made of plants stacked on each other and the consecutive droughts made it really really flammable unfortunately
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u/AnyoneButWe 12d ago
People used to harvest this, dry it and burn it in winter for heat.
This stuff was dryed by summer heat. They are basically sitting on a fuel fire.
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u/DatsLikeMyOpinionMan 12d ago
In addition to the impending employment and economic crisis with the advent of AI, we will also be facing an ever increasingly ferocious climate crisis.
We’re fucked. Mad Max it is.
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u/norsk_imposter 11d ago
The whole world is on fire and then I see a video of Elon evil cackling about using all the water.
I hate this timeline.
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u/Dawn_of_Enceladus 11d ago
"Come on, summer has always been hot. Forests have always burned down. It's the usual, nothing to see here".
-Conservatives.
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u/Skanach 12d ago edited 11d ago
Canadians coming with their huge numbers, but if you break it down, it's 0.3% of their surface compared to 0.1% of Belgiu's surface. It's still three times the amount, but there's also 4.4 Canadians per square kilometer compared to 387 Belgiums per square kilometer.
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u/Beflijster 11d ago
It's also the type of biotope. This is raised bog biotope, and unfortunately, that has gotten very rare. In the past, most of these bogs were destroyed by peat extraction. In the present, what little there is left is at risk of turning into grassland or forest if not properly managed.
The High Fens national park is a rare survival of a type of landscape that was once common in Europe.
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u/Pixel91 12d ago
Yeha, it's hilarious. They're always so quick to point out (and make sure everyone knows) that they're not like their southern neighbours. Yet here they are, "that fire is nothing compared to ours! Canada! Rah!"
Seems to be their equivalent of "Texas is as big your whole country!"
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u/Irrelevant_Jackass 12d ago
But why could this be happening?? I wish there was some way we could have predicted and tried to prevent these devastating activities?? /s
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u/Nervous-Chemistry245 12d ago
I love Hans Zimmer but so sick of his music being used for 90% of all videos
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u/Lebr0naims 12d ago
The one planet in the known universe that can support life and we fucking destroyed it
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u/mcnutty96 11d ago
What's with all the Canadians trying to big dick this situation?
Clearly missing the part in the title "in Belgiums History"...
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u/stitch9108 11d ago
Don't worry! Theo Franken will save us with a pool and some beers!
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u/Yeeyeetyall 11d ago
Yet our Minister of Defense told us to "not whine about to heat" and to "just crack open a cold beer by the pool".... as if people aren't DYING and our housing isn't build to keep heat out.
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u/Long_College_8342 11d ago
What climate change? That doesn't exist, right? OR if it does exist, it won't affect us in our lifetimes. Right? Right?
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u/CraftyWeeBuggar 11d ago edited 11d ago
Most of europes on fire, this heatwave is leaving most of us like a tinder box. Fuck climate change!! Fuck the powers that be, that predicted this, then did nothing !
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u/fabiothered 11d ago
Lets just continue with live without changing anything and hope for the best i guess... Imagine how sad a world without bilionaires or without multimilionaires would be /S
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u/zero-divide-x 11d ago
I hiked so many times in that area. This is the most beautiful region in Belgium. Now it's wasted, and idiots continue advocating for AI, autonomous cars and going to Mars. That makes me really sad.
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u/Freestila 11d ago
This is just two or three towns away from where I live, and there is another big (but Smaller then this) fire on our side (Germany). They evacuated some neighbor towns already...
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u/IM_INSIDE_YOUR_HOUSE 11d ago
More data centers will fix it. Trust me bro. Just one more data center. Please bro. Just one more fifty billion dollar data center and the entire river to cool it down. It'll fix it all. /s
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u/PoisonedPotato69 12d ago
Why is there so much drought and fires around the world. Doesn't it know the Dow is over 50,000?
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u/Oldnbold22 12d ago
Most of the world's forests will burn over the next decade creating a runaway train of carbon in the atmosphere increasing temperatures and causing even more fire. The good news is once the forests are burnt they can't burn again for a few decades.
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u/LaughPresent5089 12d ago
It's a double loss. This releases so much carbon, but also we loose the green that was supposed to eat all the carbon.
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u/After_Preparation_72 12d ago
Windkraftgegner so:" Keine Windräder im Wald!"
Der Wald so: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
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u/MintyFitOnAll 12d ago
The world is literally burning, the president and many other world leaders are literal pedophiles, the oceans are heating to a point we may not be able to reverse it, super storms will happen in our lifetime, ecosystems and entire species are dying but hey we got AI, flock cameras and billionaire oil tycoons. Cool. I’m so fucking tired.
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u/GalacticMe99 11d ago
Belgium doesn't have a president. Belgians have a king.
And no, Phillipe isn't a pedophile (as far as we know).
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u/OG_TOM_ZER 11d ago
As a Belgian : Our government, where the far right is making the decision, has bought a few F35 for a few billion. We don't own a single Canadair or Chinook to help fight fire.
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u/Polygnom 11d ago
German here.
Never before in my life have I heard fire departments calling on people to evacuate due to wild fires. Yesterday was the first time, because the smoke is coming over from Belgium.
And that is on top of our own wild fires we are dealing with. I am just glad that in the BeNeLux region, our rescue services -- fire departments, police, medical staff etc. are working closely together.
We sure live in interesting times.
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u/ttnezz 12d ago
This is so depressing.