A large wildfire is raging in the De Peel nature reserve on Wednesday. Experience shows that fires in this area are often difficult to fight. Just think back to the fire in 2020 in the Deurnese Peel where 800 hectares of nature reserve were lost. The fire went down in the books as the largest Dutch wildfire ever. The fire smoldered underground for weeks. But what makes such a fire so difficult to fight?
“De Peel is a large, impenetrable area with a lot of peat. It takes a lot of manual work to get somewhere. This could be a long-term commitment,” a spokesperson for the Brabant-Zuidoost Security Region immediately explained on Wednesday morning.
In previous fires in De Peel and also in the De Malpie nature reserve near Valkenswaard, experts said that peat fires cannot actually be extinguished. The peat smolders and small fires keep forming.
Thick combustible layer
“Most nature reserves in our region are characterized by the presence of a so-called humus layer,” the fire brigade explained in previous wildfires. “These are plant remains and other organic substances that form a thick combustible layer of sometimes tens of centimeters over the years.”
“Certainly when it is very dry like now, stubborn smoldering fires can arise in that layer that can cause a lot of smoke nuisance. In some cases (for example in the Peel areas) such fires can spread underground and literally resurface after a while.”
How to fight?
The fire service makes agreements with nature managers to fight these types of fires. “In many cases, as a fire brigade, we act defensively, we try to prevent expansion and let nature do its job,” a spokesperson explained after a fire in the Deurnese Peel in 2017.
“Defensive action can mean that we create a stop line and keep the environment wet. In this way we wait for the fire, as it were. It depends on the weather conditions, how long it has been dry, the wind speed and direction or for This tactic is chosen. After such an approach, when the acute danger has passed, a blackened and often smoldering area is left behind.”
Special team: the hand crew
Because these types of fires are so difficult to fight, a special team is often deployed: a so-called hand crew team that sets out on foot. This is also the case with the fire that rages in De Peel on Wednesday. For the time being, the Netherlands has one such team: the hand crew team Overijssel which has been in existence since 2013.
In the south of the Netherlands there have been plans for a year and a half to set up its own specialist team. It should be operational in the spring of 2023. That’s later than planned.
In 2017, the hand crew team from Overijssel came to help extinguish a wildfire in Valkenswaard.