The serious fires that have affected Greece for weeks, in the midst of a heat wave, threaten in the last hours the historic city of Olympia, cradle of the Olympic games, located on the Peloponnese peninsula.
Several towns have been evacuated as a precaution, Civil Protection has indicated, which has sent text messages and Twitter to warn of the risk. Several roads are closed and there are 29 fire teams, five planes and a helicopter working in the firefighting stations.
The island of Rhodes and the Magnesia prefecture have been the regions most affected by the fires, which have forced the evacuation of thousands of tourists and residents.
The forest fires are mostly under control, but hundreds of firefighters remain at key points in the face of the threat of strong winds, authorities said Saturday, as three new fires were declared on the Peloponnese peninsula, and authorities ordered the preventive evacuation of four communities.
Earlier, a fire department spokesman told AFP there was “no longer an active front” in the three biggest wildfires in Rhodes, Corfu and central Greece, where thousands of evacuations have taken place over the past two weeks.
“Scattered sources of fires are being extinguished,” he reported. There are more than 460 firefighters deployed in this area. Fueled by scorching temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds, the fires wreaked havoc at the peak of the summer season in Greece.
Some 20,000 tourists and locals had to be evacuated from hotels and towns on the island of Rhodes and hundreds more in Corfu and other areas. The fires left at least five people dead and burned almost 50,000 hectares of forest and vegetation, according to estimates by the Athens Observatory.
Two pilots died on Tuesday when their planes crashed while fighting a fire in Evia, and three other charred bodies were recovered from fires in Evia and near the industrial area of ??the central Greek port city of Volos.
The fires have put pressure on the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who was re-elected just a month ago.
The citizen protection minister resigned his post on Friday after it emerged he had taken a vacation while the country battled wildfires. For more than 10 days this month, Greece suffered from what some experts say is the wave longest recorded July heat in decades. Temperatures, which hit 46°C this week, have started to drop.
The EMY national weather service predicts that temperatures will not rise above 37°C on Saturday, but strong winds that could reach 60 kilometers per hour are expected.
Croatia, Italy and Portugal also suffered fires this week, and in Algeria 34 people died in the fire, which was fueled by a heat wave.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
