Dutch firefighter Jelle Merkus, who was sent to Spain to help battle wildfires there, was put straight back on duty in his home country, working alongside hundreds of his colleagues to fight a blaze in a nature reserve in Limburg in the eastern Netherlands.
"I've just spent two and a half weeks in Spain," the fire services unit leader from the northern Dutch province of Friesland told a dpa reporter in Oostrum on Wednesday. "We were helping to fight wildfires there."
Merkus was among around 40 Dutch firefighters who travelled to Spain to learn how to tackle large-scale wildfires, which occur there much more frequently than in the Netherlands.
In the end, there was little time for instruction. "We had to head out immediately with our Spanish colleagues and help fight the fires," Merkus recalled. "It was a special experience."
He said conditions in Spain were very different from those in the Netherlands. "The landscape and vegetation are different, and so is the way they work. In Spain they do much more by hand, whereas here we mainly extinguish fires with water," Merkus said.
Nevertheless, hand tools have also been used during the current operation in Limburg.
After back-to-back emergency deployments, Merkus admits he is exhausted. His team is now heading home to Friesland in the north of the country after being relieved by firefighters from neighbouring Belgium.