Major fires just outside of Berlin are unlikely to improve in the next few days, firefighters have said. Authorities said the cause is still unclear but “all indications” suggest the fire could be a case of arson.
German authorities on Saturday said they had made progress fighting a major forest fire outside the capital Berlin, but an area surrounding two evacuated villages continued to be unstable.
The fire near the town of Treuenbrietzen in Brandenburg state started Thursday afternoon and quickly spread through pine forests that have been dried out due to drought and an unusually hot summer.
A senior local official in Potsdam-Mittelmark county, Christian Stein, said that “we managed during the night to get a grip on the fire,” with some large areas extinguished.
Residents of a third evacuated village, Frohnsdorf, were allowed to return home on Friday, but around the villages of Klausdorf and Tiefenbrunnen, the blaze continued to flare up.
Some 600 firefighters are battling the flames, which took hold of about 400 hectares (100 acres) of sparsely populated woodland after starting some 50 kilometers (31 miles) south-west of the edge of Berlin.
The cause of the fire was initially unclear, but authorities announced on Friday evening that “all indications” now suggest that the fire could have been caused by arson.
Raimund Engel, an official tasked with handling forest fires on behalf of Brandenburg, the state where the fire broke out, said the wind had dropped making it easier to contain the fire.
“The fire is currently not spreading further,” Engel said. “I hope the wind will not start up again,” he added.
A fire department spokesman said the situation was unlikely to improve in the next few days either, with Brandenburg firefighters predicting it will take several days to completely extinguish the large blaze.
Residents in the capital have been told to keep their windows and doors shut as smoke from the fire continues to blow towards the city.
Unexploded munitions from World War II have complicated firefighting efforts with the fire causing some of them to go off.