ATHENS — As Spain and France began to gain control over devastating wildfires that last week sparked one of their largest peacetime evacuations, Greece was battling multiple blazes on Sunday — and a sense that its odyssey is far from over.
Two firefighters, a Greek and a Danish national, died after a pair of helicopters battling a major wildfire burning out of control west of Athens crashed in midair. Another Greek and a British national were recovered alive.
Television footage showed one of the helicopters exploding and plunging to the ground in flames after the collision. Foreign firefighting and helicopter crews are often deployed in Greece to help tackle wildfires.
Another three Greek firefighters died last Wednesday while tackling wildfires in Crete and on the Peloponnese, a rugged peninsula in southern Greece.
While a fire that has been burning since Friday around Porto Germeno on the Gulf of Corinth some 60 kilometers northwest of Athens has subsided, on Saturday the flames crossed a mountain to the south, fanned by strong winds of up to 130 kilometers per hour, and reached the settlement of Veniza closer to the capital. According to initial estimates, the fire has destroyed around 200 houses in the area.
On Sunday flames spread rapidly through western Attica, a region that encompasses Athens, threatening communities and an industrial district outside Megara, about 30 kilometers from the capital. Speaking on state TV Ert, the president of the firefighters’ federation, Nikos Lavranos, described it as a “huge front” and a “black blanket covering an area of around [25 acres].”
Dozens of settlements have been evacuated, and firefighters are focusing on preventing the flames from advancing toward Megara, pop. 30,000. Greece’s firefighting service said more than 2,500 people had been evacuated in western Attica by late Sunday afternoon.
“Unfortunately, we have uncontrolled fires in far too many areas. As soon as the fire brigade arrives at one spot, just as the fire is being brought under control, it flares up again in another spot,” Megara Mayor Panagiotis Margetis told Open TV.
Firefighters were also fighting another blaze in the Peloponnese on Sunday as well as on the island of Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy. More than 500 firefighters have been deployed across Greece.
Wind speeds are set to drop significantly on Monday, according to the National Meteorological Service, which should ease the work of the fire services.
Europe has been ravaged by wildfires this summer after months of record-breaking heat and little rain. Scientists have found that climate change vastly increased the likelihood of Western Europe’s record-breaking heat wave in late June as well as a spring drought — both events that made the land more fire-prone.
Wildfires in France and Spain forced the evacuation of over 300,000 people last month.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his “deepest sorrow” for the “tragic accident” of the helicopters, and pledged state support for those whose homes were destroyed.
“There are moments when the force of nature and the intensity of weather conditions exceed all human planning and every operational capability,” he said in a social media post on Sunday. “These are extremely difficult days for our country.”
