Fires in Greece devastated 100,000 hectares in two weeks and caused unprecedented “ecological catastrophe”

Hundreds of firefighters were fighting on Thursday to contain new fires in areas of Greece devastated by forest fires, where the flames caused what the Prime Minister described as “the biggest ecological disaster in the country in decades ”.

However, the nightly rains in some areas and the drop in temperatures seemed to have eased the situation after two weeks of devastating fires, and the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis He said that “today we can be more optimistic” than the days before.

Greece’s most severe heat wave in decades has fired fires that destroyed more than 100,000 hectares of forests and farmland, the worst damage caused by forest fires in the country since 2007, the European Forest Fire Information System said on Thursday.

The fires killed three peopleHundreds of homeless have forced thousands to flee and caused economic and environmental havoc.

Greece is just one of many countries in the Mediterranean region which have been hit by a savage fire season. that the authorities attributed to climate change.

“The climate crisis is here and tells us that everything must change”the Greek prime minister told reporters, highlighting other devastating fires in Turkey, Italy and Algeria.

The prime minister, severely criticized for his handling of the fires, added that firefighters, volunteers and residents they had saved “countless” homes and businesses, but dozens of properties had been lost anyway.

Mitsotakis said that 150 homes were lost in the Athens metropolitan area last week, while the count continues on the island of Evia, which accounts for more than half of the area burned in the whole country.

Near Athens

According to official data, in eight days 586 fires were recorded in Greece, caused by the worst heatwave in three decades in a Mediterranean country accustomed to high temperatures and forest fires in summer.

In total, from July 29 to August 12, 100,874 hectares burned in the country, according to calculations made by the AFP based on data provided by the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS).

On average, annually since 2008, approximately 2,750 hectares have burned during this same period.

“A saint saved me”

The inhabitants of about twenty municipalities have been evacuated in recent days, while Hundreds of firefighters, some sent by European countries, fight relentlessly against the flames.

“I am lost”, he commented with a sigh Kostis Angelou while he wandered among his more than 370 dead goats, because of the fire which devoured the forests of Euboea.

The 44-year-old farmer managed to survive by spending hours under an irrigation water pipe, under threat of fire. “A saint saved me,” he said.

“We’re done. What can we do?”his father wondered, Spyros Angelou, 77 years old.

Experts associate this heat wave with global warming, as reflected in a preliminary report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), to which the AFP had access and this indicates the Mediterranean as a “climate change hotspot”.

In Algeria, three days of national mourning were announced from Thursday for the 69 dead in the fires.

For its part, Italy he was also hit by fires, with five deaths, while the island of Sicily recorded 48.8 degrees on Wednesday, a new European record, surpassing the precedent of Greece.

Eight people have died in fires in southern Turkey earlier this month, as in the north, the death toll rose to five on Thursday as flash floods swept through various parts of the Black Sea.

(With information from AFP)

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