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The burned trees, burnt cars and fire – ridden houses are what remains of Mati, a residential and holiday area just 30 kilometers from Athens, where the fire up to the end of the year is still very hot. to Tuesday made 74 dead and 182 wounded. At Mati, the violence of the winds, with gusts of more than 100 km / h, caused a sudden expansion of fire on the houses.
The death toll shocked Greece, with macabre discoveries such as 26 charred bodies, including young children, in a house.
Yesterday, in front of partially destroyed houses, groups of neighbors gathered tears in their eyes to try to understand what had happened to them and save some things. They are the luckiest in the disaster, as there are still many missing and dozens of buildings that rescue forces have not been able to access, so there is concern that death figures will increase.
Most of the dead have perished in their homes or in their vehicles, devastated by the rapidly spreading flames.
"Today, Greece is in mourning," said Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, announcing in a televised message three days of mourning in the country. The presidency of the Republic canceled the events scheduled for Tuesday to commemorate the restoration of democracy in Greece in July 1974. Tsipras promised that "no one will be left unaided" and "nothing without an answer".
For the moment the reality is that many neighbors are homeless, at the mercy of the help that they receive, and with the doubt of what caused this serious tragedy.
The prosecution opened an investigation to determine the causes on suspicion that the fires could be intentional or at least caused by careless behavior
Greece, which activated the European Civil Protection Mechanism, relies on aid, especially in the air media, from Spain, France, Israel, Bulgaria, Turkey, Italy, Macedonia, Portugal and Croatia
The Greek government has announced that it will support funeral costs and approve tax measures for victims.
Before any controversy about the response of the state apparatus began, the Greek government pointed out It was facing an "extreme", "asymmetrical" phenomenon, said Tsipras
The Government spokesman, Dimitris Tzanakopulos, explained that there were "15 simultaneous fires on three different fronts" in Attica. The violent fires in Greece are among the deadliest in Europe to date in the 21st century.
In Portugal last year 64 people died in a forest fire in Pedrogao Grande, in the center of the country. Portugal has already been hit in 2003 by serious fires that swept a heat wave in the center and south of the country for weeks, killing 20 people
In Russia, 34 people died in 2015 in fires that have devastated 10,000 square kilometers in Siberia since mid-April. Five years earlier, another fire in western Russia has caused more than 60 deaths
. In Greece, 77 people died in late August 2007 in unprecedented forest fires in the Peloponnese and the island of Euboea.
Mati, the spa where families died
"Mati no longer exists": sorry silence, the small coastal town east of Athens has been reduced to ashes. So far, we have found 74 bodies burned, but as in all tragedies, the death toll can increase as the hours go by.
The last bodies found come from a group of 4 or 5 people, a part of a family, a group of friends or strangers "who have come together to try to protect themselves by trying to 39; reach the sea, 30 or 40 meters apart, "says Vassilis Andriopoulos, one of the Red Cross rescuers discovered the horrible show Tuesday morning
laments the presence of" small children "in this group.
Emergency teams found another group of 26 deadly victims, some of them minor, near the top of a cliff facing a beach. "They tried to find an escape route, but unfortunately these people and their children do not arrive at the hour." Instinctively, in the end, they kissed, "said Nikos Economopoulos, head of the Greek Red Cross in Skai TV
In the main street everything is black, especially the tall pines that surround the houses. The sea is gray, the smell of fire is omnipresent, the fire planes pass through the sky intermittently, dozens of burning cars cover the roads, and coastguards and other boats have saved nearly 700 people and abducted 19 survivors and four corpses to the sea.
"Neighbors and tourists from the region could not escape in time, even if they were a few meters away from the sea or in their homes, "said fire spokeswoman Stavroula Maliri.
Neighbors who escaped the fire were evacuated early in the morning by patrolmen who left them in the nearby port city of Rafina. , Evangelos Bournous, said: "Mati does not exist anymore."
Climate Change
Exceptional Heat . The exceptional heat wave in the northern hemisphere, with several fires in Greece and Scandinavia, will become more and more common as a result of global warming, experts say. The situation is exceptional in Northern Europe, where the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) predicts above-normal temperatures until early August, from Ireland to the Baltic States . Temperatures were already reaching 30ºC peaks in the polar circle. Sweden, in particular, suffers the hottest month of July in two and a half centuries. An extraordinary phenomenon also in Japan, where temperatures have exceeded 35ºC, causing 80 deaths. Siberia has also been affected, as well as the United States, with more than 40ºC in Los Angeles.
Manager. "Each individual event is very difficult to attribute to human activities", explains the French climatologist Jean Jouzel. But the recent episodes "are consistent with the long-term trends brought on by the increased concentration of greenhouse gases," says the WMO. Given that the last three years have been the hottest ever recorded on Earth, "the most important question is: will we see (these extreme episodes) more frequently if we do not reduce CO2 emissions?" Asks Anders Levermann , climatologist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. And he answers, "Yes."
Next decades . According to the 2012 report of the UN Panel of Experts on Climate Change (IPCC), the models "anticipate an intensification over the next decades" of extreme episodes. Even if the Paris Agreement is respected to limit the average global warming to 2 ° C compared to the pre – industrial era, droughts, heat waves, floods and hurricanes could multiply, even though they do not exist. intensify and expand to new territories. According to a study published in 2017 in Nature Climate Change, even meeting Paris' commitments, half of the world's population would be exposed to deadly heatwaves by 2100, compared with around 30% today. "Each year, we will have records of temperatures that will be beaten, once in Russia, another in France or Japan (…)", explains Jouzel. Heat waves as in 2003 – 70,000 deaths in Europe – "could become the norm after 2050 or 2060".
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