Greece’s worst wildfire of the year has left one woman dead as it continued to burn on the outskirts of the capital Athens on Tuesday, although milder winds and firefighting efforts helped reduce its intensity, authorities said.
Hundreds of firefighters backed by six waterbombing aircraft battled the blaze that broke out on Sunday near the village of Varnavas, 35km north of Athens.
Stoked by gale-force winds, the blaze leapt from a hilly area into the suburbs on Monday, torching homes and stirring panic in neighbourhoods that had not seen such a fire so close to the centre in decades.
“Thirty-five years living here, a fire had never reached this area,” said Meletis Makris, a 65-year-old pensioner in Vrilissia.
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Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is expected to chair a ministerial meeting later on Tuesday. The Greek government has announced compensation and relief measures for those who have lost homes or property.
The blaze reached the suburb of Vrilissia, around 14km from central Athens by Monday afternoon, where a 64-year-woman was found dead inside a factory, witnesses said.
The cause of the wildfire was not yet determined, but the fierce blazes seen on Monday had subsided and the thick smoke that covered central Athens had mostly lifted.
“There is no active front, but scattered outbreaks,” climate crisis and civil protection minister Vassilis Kikilias said in a televised statement.
However, gales were expected to pick up again later on Tuesday and the country will remain on high fire alert until Thursday, with strong winds and temperatures forecast to reach up to 40 degrees.
[ Residents flee as wildfire fanned by gales menaces Athens suburbsOpens in new window ]
Wildfires have been a common feature of Greek summers for years – its deadliest blaze killed 104 people in the seaside town of Mati in 2018. But climate change has brought hotter weather and less rain, ideal conditions for widespread fires.
The southern European country experienced its warmest winter on record this year and was on track for its hottest summer, with scant rain in many areas for months.
“The wildfire had all the characteristics that we, as firefighters, don’t want a forest fire to have. A combination of hot, dry and windy [conditions],” Nikos Lavranos, head of the Greek federation of fire service employees, told Greek TV.
“It was extremely aggressive, difficult to manage and unpredictable,” he said.
Blazes amid hot weather have broken out across southern Europe this summer, including in Spain and the Balkans.
Greece’s National Observatory said satellite images showed the fire had damaged around 10,000 hectares of land. Local newspaper Proto Thema said it included 100 homes.
Residents and firefighters returned to some areas of northern Athens on Tuesday to assess the damage – kitchens and livingrooms blackened by fire, ceilings caved in, cars reduced to sooty frames.
“My house was utterly destroyed, even the walls fell down. There’s nothing left,” said Sakis Morfis (70) a Vrilissia resident. “The only thing I cared about was saving my dogs, so I left everything [else] behind.”
More than 30 areas were forced to evacuate, along with at least three hospitals, with power cuts in parts of the wider Athens region.
Greece has activated the European Civil protection mechanism and is expecting assistance from France, Italy and the Czech Republic with aircraft and firefighters. Spain and Turkey have also offered help.
The measures announced by the climate crisis and civil protection ministry on Tuesday include rent subsidies, a three-year property tax exemption, and financial aid to restore damaged homes and businesses.
Opposition parties accused the government of not doing enough to prevent the disaster. Syriza, the leftist main opposition party, questioned the number of aircraft battling the blaze. The socialist Pasok party said Greeks were paying the price of poor fire prevention policies. – Reuters
