Fifty evacuated people had still not been able to return to their homes on Wednesday afternoon. The situation was reported “stable”, but with winds lifting, experts feared embers could reignite. Authorities in the southwestern canton of Valais on Wednesday announced a ban on open air fires from Thursday.
A second Super Puma helicopter of the Swiss army, equipped with infrared cameras to detect heat zones joined the firefighting efforts on Wednesday, with ground forces also deployed to the area around Bitsch and Riederalp, canton Valais.
They join around 100 firefighters and five other helicopters battling to control around 300 fires affecting some 100 hectares of forest.
“We would need to dump a reservoir of water to extinguish all parts of the burning forest at once,” said Mario Schaller, who is leading operations for the firefighting service.
It is estimated to take several weeks before all the flames are completely extinguished but favourable winds overnight prevented the blaze from spreading.
The cause of the forest fire and the exact point that it started have yet to be determined.
With devastating forest fires affecting many parts of Europe and further afield in the world, the Valais blaze is the first major forest fire in Switzerland this year.
Fires burned a record 700,000 hectares of forest in the European Union amid a heatwave last year.
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Forest fires multiply as drought persists in Switzerland
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Canton Ticino has been hardest hit by forest fires this year. But several other regions have also raised their wildfire risk levels to “severe”.
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