Firefighters continue to battle deadly blazes in Greece for the sixth straight day on Thursday, as anger mounts in ravaged areas near Athens over a repeat of the blazes.
At the gates of the Greek capital, the devastating flames fanned by high temperatures and strong winds continue to progress on the foothills of Mount Parnes where the largest forest near the Greek capital is located.
They have threatened for two days an important national park which shelters in particular many species of birds, firs of Kefalonia, pines of Aleppo and oaks, according to the firefighters.
These fires also led to evacuations of residential areas.
In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, “there was an explosion of fire” in the area, announced the spokesman for the fire brigade, Yannis Artopoios, on the public channel ERT.
The front line of operations is in an area that mixes forest and urban fabric, about twenty kilometers north of the capital, he explained.
In the small village of Aghia Paraskevi, at the foot of Mount Parnès, impregnated with a strong smell of burning, the alleys are emptied of their inhabitants on Thursday.
In places, the carcasses of charred cars and burnt trees testify to the advance in the past hours of the flames through the small gardens, the vegetable gardens and the alleys.
Then, during the morning, locals return to the site to see the damage and volunteer to help.
Many are expressing anger and bitterness as major fires ravage Greece for the second time in a month after those on the islands of Rhodes, Corfu and Euboea and in the Athens region at the end of July.
Among them, Nikos Lazarou, a 32-year-old mechanic, talks about his “anger”. The fires “repeat every year, the authorities should take measures and the people too”, assures this man who lives in Germany.
“The state must really toughen the penalties (in the event of arson), this cannot continue, the whole country has burned down,” added Nikos Xagoraris, deputy mayor of the neighboring town of Acharnes, on the public channel ERT. , before bursting into tears.
Antonis, a 35-year-old bank worker who declined to be named, said he was “sad” at the extent of the damage.
“We often went for a walk in this forest (which burned, editor’s note), it was our little breath. My child will grow up without being able to see that”, he laments.
In a few days, the fires burned more than 60,000 hectares in northern Greece and 5,000 hectares west of Athens, according to estimates by the national observatory of forest fires managed by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
On Wednesday evening, Athenians residing in certain central districts could see from their balconies or windows flames and a blaze on the wooded hills near the capital.
The most important front was in the north of the country where a huge fire that started on Saturday near the port city of Alexandroupoli now forms a unified front of more than 15 kilometers.
The bodies of 19 suspected migrants, including two children, were found in the area this week.
Authorities have warned that as the region is a major entry point for migrants from neighboring Turkey, there are likely to be more casualties among those seeking asylum in the European Union.
A third major fire occurred in Boeotia, north of Athens, where a thousand-year-old Byzantine monastery, Osios Loukas, listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, narrowly escaped destruction on Wednesday.
High temperatures associated with drought and in places strong winds will persist until Friday, according to meteorologists.
The thermometer should show up to 38°C this Thursday in some parts of the country.
Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias warned on Wednesday that the country was going through the worst summer of fires since fire risk maps were introduced in 2009.
“This is an unprecedented situation,” he said.
The Greek government, which blames the fires on climate change, is accused of not doing enough to protect biodiversity and take action to prevent the fires.
At the end of July, violent fires had been fanned by a long wave of heat wave with temperatures in places having exceeded 45°C.
08/24/2023 12:05:00 – Acharnes (Greece) (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
