Greek firefighters faced around 50 new blazes on Tuesday, warning of the high risk of new fires on Wednesday due to expected strong winds.
It is “a difficult day. The firefighters are struggling with several fires and are fighting in many areas of the territory, ”explained the spokesperson for the fire brigade, Yannis Artopios.
Forty-seven forest fires have broken out in the past 24 hours, another spokesman, Vassilis Vathrakogiannis, later said. Two of them, west of Athens, were still not under control at the end of the day. The European Civil Protection mechanism has been activated and four Canadair from France and Italy are due to arrive in Greece as reinforcements “in the next few hours”, he announced.
Strong winds and 44° expected
While a new heat wave with highs of 44°C expected to hit Greece from Thursday, Civil Protection has warned of the high risk of new fires, particularly in the region around Athens, Attica, Crete (south) or in the south of the Peloponnese peninsula (southwest) where winds of 50 to 60 km / h are forecast for Wednesday.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who left the EU-Latin America summit in Brussels prematurely, went to the Civil Protection Operations Coordination Center on his return to Athens, according to his services.
Beach resorts under threat
The most violent fire is in the forest of Dervenohoria, 50 km north of Athens, and it is spreading rapidly, according to Vathrakogiannis. Some 250 firefighters, 11 planes and nine helicopters are deployed in the area, according to him, and had to rescue several people in the area where houses were destroyed by the flames.
“The winds are not as strong as yesterday” but “the night will still be difficult,” said Vassilis Pergalias, the mayor of Tanagra, a town near Dervenohoria, on the public television channel ERT.
80 km west of Athens, near the Isthmus of Corinth, another front is still active in the seaside resort of Loutraki where 120 firefighters, five planes and a helicopter operate.
On the other hand, the seaside area of Kouvaras, 40 kilometers from the capital, where a fire broke out on Monday afternoon before winds carried it to neighboring towns, was out of danger.
Extreme heat wave
“Fortunately, the wind died down on Tuesday but the disaster is significant, nearly 3,000 hectares have been burned,” commented Dimitris Loukas, the mayor of Lavreotiki in the affected region.
Like part of the rest of Europe, Greece has been hit since last Friday by its first heat wave of the year with a peak of 44.2°C in the region of Thebes (center), informed the National Observatory of ‘Athens. Sunday evening, the mercury began to drop slightly but strong winds, between 50 and 60 km / h, began to blow.
From Thursday until the end of the weekend, a new wave of heat waves is expected with temperatures of 44°C expected in central Greece on Friday and Saturday, the national weather service (Emy) warned. .
Forest fires are common in Greece during the summer. In 2021, huge fires killed three people, ravaging more than 100,000 hectares of forest. And, in 2018, more than 100 people died in Mati, near Athens, in the country’s deadliest fire. These disasters made the front page of the Greek press. “Meltèmes (winds from the North editor’s note) and heat wave have awakened the nightmare of the fires”, headlined the liberal daily Kathimerini on Tuesday.