A fire below the Brocken summit in the Harz Mountains continued to spread on Sunday night. In the meantime, an area of ​​around 62 hectares of forest is burning, said Wernigerode's city spokeswoman Ariane Hofmann on Sunday morning after a briefing. The fire broke out on Saturday and was initially not under control on Sunday.

Five fire-fighting helicopters and more than 300 emergency services are fighting the fire, and a good 50 police forces are currently securing the area around the Brocken, which is closed to visitors. The town of Schierke, which belongs to Wernigerode, is still not at risk, it said.

The Harz narrow-gauge railways do not go up the 1141-meter-high mountain on Sunday. As the railway company announced on its website, there is limited train service between Wernigerode and Drei Annen Hohne.

A forest fire broke out near Schierke at the foot of the Brocken on August 11th. It burned for several days. Roland Pietsch, head of the Harz National Park, spoke of 3.6 hectares of forest with dead spruce trees that were affected by the fire. On August 14, the fire was considered extinguished. The place where the fire broke out is said to have been near the railway line of the Brockenbahn. The Landeszentrum Wald currently gives the forest fire danger level for the Harz Mountains as three out of five.