As 4,000 residents of a village in The Netherlands were evacuated due to a wildfire Wednesday, officials had to figure out how to cope with housing displaced people in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“In the times we're living through — the corona era — we don't take the decision lightly to move people from home to evacuation centers,” Monique de Boer, the mayor of Herkenbosch, told The Associated Press.

Infected residents were sent to a "corona hotel" in a nearby town. At least two Dutch hotel chains have converted buildings to house people with coronavirus who aren't sick enough to need hospitalization, according to Dutch News.

Other residents were allowed to leave on their own or in transportation carefully coordinated by local officials.

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There was no word on how many people in the village, which is near the German border about 124 miles south of Amsterdam, have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The Netherlands as a whole has reported at least 35,026 cases and 4,067 deaths, according to data tracked by Johns Hopkins University.

The evacuation was driven by smoke from a fire burning in a nearby national park, one of several in recent days in The Netherlands fueled by dry weather across the region.

Parts of The Netherlands, eastern Belgium, western Germany and northeast France have seen little or no significant precipitation over the past 30 days.

"This is because a persistent dome of high pressure aloft centered near the U.K. and Low Countries has diverted the storm track (jet stream) and squashed any precipitation chances," weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman said.

Earlier in the week, residents from a nursing home infected with COVID-19 in another Dutch town had to be evacuated due to smoke from a different fire, Voice of America reported.

For the latest coronavirus information in your county and a full list of important resources to help you make the smartest decisions regarding the disease, check out our dedicated COVID-19 page.

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