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Residents have mounted 24-hour surveillance in an attempt to save their homes from the forest fires ravaging the Greek island of Evia as the government has pledged to help citizens who have lost their homes.
Hundreds of Greek firefighters, supported by firefighters and foreign volunteers, battled outbreaks on Greece’s second-largest island, where fires were burning on Tuesday for the eighth day.
Other fronts in the Peloponnese also reignited a few hours after the announcement of their control, and the authorities ordered the evacuation of twenty more villages in the region of Arkadia.
The government has announced relief measures for those who have lost homes and property as more than 500 fires have forced the evacuation of tens of villages and thousands of people.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Monday apologized for the failures in tackling the wildfires that have been burning across the country as authorities began to count the cost of lost homes and livelihoods.
Mitsotakis approved an aid budget of 500 million euros ($ 585.85 million) for Euboea and the Attica region around Athens and said all forests destroyed by the fires would be restored.
As part of the relief measures detailed by the government on Tuesday, those affected would receive compensation for damage to homes or businesses, exempt from property tax and receive rent subsidies.
The Prime Minister also pledged hundreds of millions of euros in additional funds for civil protection, reforestation and flood prevention.
The opposition criticizes the government
However, the main political opposition criticized the government for using climate change as an excuse to cover up shortcomings in its handling of the crisis.
“Climate change is, without a doubt, a particularly dangerous reality. However, this cannot be used as an excuse by the government because it ignored our warnings and those of the scientists, ”Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing SYRIZA party, told reporters.
Deputy Civil Protection Minister Nikos Hardalias told reporters the state apparatus did all it could to deal with 586 forest fires in eight days in the worst heat wave in 30 years .
“Do not shoot the fighters at the hour of battle. Every home lost to us is a stab in the heart, ”said Hardalias. “The losses we suffered involved combatants, not civilians. “
The flames killed three people in Greece and several people were injured, some seriously. Sixteen people were arrested on suspicion of arson or negligent arson, police said.
Sentinel-2 satellite imagery showed tracts of forest burnt by forest fires in Attica, Evia and the Peloponnese, with the Athens National Observatory estimating that about 65,000 hectares (about 160,600 acres) had been burned in total on Sunday.
Lack of air support
Much of the attention on Tuesday was focused on preventing the blaze in north central Evia, Istiaia, where 7,000 residents had yet to evacuate.
Firefighters and volunteers had engaged overnight in “hand-to-hand combat, fighting body and soul” to erect firebreaks outside the villages, Istiaia mayor Yiannis Kontzias said.
He said “mistakes have been made and we must learn from them”, adding: “The Greek state must never forget what happened in the north of Euboea”.
“The helicopters have helped a lot and if we had done this from the start we would have avoided all this destruction. “
It echoed a widely heard complaint about the lack of air support not only over Evia, but across Greece.
Many mayors across the country have complained about a serious lack of air support in the fight against the fires, despite government assurances that sufficient resources have been set aside.
Evia’s force includes hundreds of firefighters from Romania, Serbia and Ukraine. They were reinforced on Tuesday with units from Cyprus, Slovakia and Poland, the civil protection authority said.
The rugged island is popular with vacationers, and many Greeks have summer residences in Evia. Some 3,000 people were evacuated by sea last week as the flames approached.
European Union states and other countries have so far provided 21 planes, 250 vehicles and more than 1,200 firefighters, some of whom were due to arrive on Friday, according to the AFP news agency.
Meanwhile, crews battled two fires on Tuesday in coastal Mugla province in neighboring southwestern Turkey, including a bushfire near Bodrum’s Gumusluk resort area.
The mayor of Bodrum said the fire was about to be extinguished and no residential areas were threatened.
Also in Turkey, firefighters quickly put out a new fire in a forest in the Sariyer district of Istanbul.
Eight people have been killed in the recent fires in Turkey.
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