A wildfire has been spreading outside Athens for several days, reports Reuters. This report contains upsetting details.
The blaze started near a Mount Parnitha village then spread towards Menidi, and is about 20km (12 miles) north of the city at the time of writing. The capital which is home to 3.7 million people, has been blanketed in suffocating smoke and ash.
1. Fire crews in second battle
To make matters worse for emergency services, the Athens fire is just one of 355 fires that have erupted across Greece in the last week. Most of them (58%) started in the last three days, “fanned by heat and high winds”, according to Reuters, in a horror story resembling Canada and Hawaii’s situations this summer.
Crews are already exhausted seeing as it is the Hellenic Republic’s second wildfire outbreak of the summer season: the first saw reports of panicked evacuations of tens of thousands of visitors on the tourist Mecca of Rhodes.
This summer is the worst since meteorological data began to be collected.
Vassilis Kikilias, Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister
2. European solidarity
About 200 firefighters plus volunteers – as well as personnel, vehicles, aircraft, various equipment and support sent from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Romania, Sweden and others in a show of European solidarity – have been involved in battling the flames.
Kikilias praised firefighters’ “superhuman efforts” to contain the infernos. The Greek Prime Minister tweeted thanks to the various countries sending aid to embattled emergency teams.
Meanwhile fire services issued grim warnings, saying even more blazes could develop.
3. Evacuations and bodies
Evacuations from nursing homes have already begun and orders to certain residents to leave their homes have been issued. In northwest Athens, about 700 migrants were taken from a notorious facility Amygdaleza – once synonymous with child refugees and hunger strikes and described in 2016 by The Guardian as “deplorable” – to another camp. They were the lucky ones. 18 burned bodies believed to be migrants were discovered on a refugee route in Dadia Forest in northeastern Greece on Tuesday.
In my 32 years of service I have never experienced similar extreme conditions.
Giorgos Pournaras, fire brigade head
In words that emphasise how much care the public need to take to avoid being the cause of potential fire-starting activity, his colleague and spokesperson Iaonnis Artopios has said the response to the wildfires has included 140 arrests, the majority of which were for negligence, but 23 were for deliberate arson, and nearly all involved heat-inducing or agricultural outdoor work.
