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Greece enlists help from European allies to tackle raging wildfires Thousands in Greece and Turkey evacuate as winds and heat fan wildfires
(about 8 hours later)
Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft join fight against blazes that have ravaged homes and forced evacuations Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft join rescue effort in Greece, and firefighter among those killed in Turkey
Greece is battling wildfires that have ravaged homes and led to evacuations for a second day, with the help of Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft expected to arrive later on Sunday. Thousands of people in Greece and Turkey have been forced to evacuate homes as firefighters in the countries battled to contain wildfires fanned by strong winds and searing heat.
The wildfires were raging on Sunday morning in the Peloponnese area west of the capital, as well as on the islands of Evia and Kythera, with aircraft and helicopters resuming their work in several parts of the country at dawn. As temperatures in south-eastern Europe exceeded 40C for a seventh straight day, the Greek prime minister praised rescue workers for waging “a titanic battle” to bring fires under control.
“Today is expected to be a difficult day with a very high risk of fire, almost throughout the territory”, the fire brigade spokesperson Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said, though he added that the situation was improving. “The state mechanism has been called to engage in a titanic battle, simultaneously responding to dozens of wildfires across the country,” Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a statement. “To those who saw their properties destroyed by the fury of fire, know that the state will stand by your side.”
Forecasters predicted the strong winds that have fanned the flames would die down in most areas, but warned that Kythera – a popular tourist island with 3,600 inhabitants – continued to face “worrying” windy conditions. Eleven regions of Greece face a “very high risk” of fire, and the government has appealed for help from EU partners to help it deal with fires burning on multiple fronts.
Evacuation messages were sent early on Sunday to people on the island, which lies off the south-eastern tip of the Peloponnese, as the fires continued unabated. Emergency services said that while a conflagration that had injured two firefighters in Kryoneri, north-east of Athens, had been successfully quelled, fires around Messinia in the south-west Peloponnese and on the popular island of Kythera had not been contained.
“Houses, beehives, olive trees have been burnt,” Giorgos Komninos, the deputy mayor of Kythera, told local outlet ERT News. “A monastery is in direct danger right now,” he said, adding that half of the island had been burnt. The authorities were also battling flare-ups on the islands of Evia and Crete. In all of the stricken areas residents received messages to evacuate.
Dozens of firefighters supported by three helicopters and two aircraft were battling the Kythera blaze, which erupted on Saturday morning and forced the evacuation of a popular tourist beach. Several regions were placed under a red category 5 alert, the highest on the national scale, because of conditions exacerbated by the extreme weather that had turned terrain to tinder.
Greece had requested help from EU allies and two Italian aircraft were expected on Sunday, according to the fire brigade, with units from the Czech Republic already at work. Eleven regions of Greece still face a very high fire risk, according to officials. The National Observatory in Athens recorded a temperature of 45.8C (114.5F) in Messinia on Friday. On Saturday, the temperature reached 45.2C (113.4F) in Amfilochia, western Greece.
Firefighters are working in several areas of the Peloponnese and there were flare-ups overnight on the island of Evia, near Athens, where the flames have destroyed swathes of forest and killed thousands of farm animals. By late Sunday, as Czech firefighters and Italian water-bombers joined emergency teams in Greece, the focus turned to Kythera.
Workers have been scrambling since dawn to repair serious damage to Evia’s electricity network and some villages were facing problems with water supply. Describing the destruction as “incalculable”, the public broadcaster ERT reported: “The first images are resonant of a biblical disaster as huge areas have been reduced to cinders and ash.”
Further south, on Crete, reports said fires that broke out on Saturday afternoon and destroyed four houses and a church had been largely contained. The island’s deputy mayor, Giorgos Komninos, was cited as saying: “Everything, from houses, beehives [to] olive trees has been burnt.”
Police were reportedly bolstering forces in Kryoneri, north of Athens, as fears grow that looters could target houses abandoned by their owners fleeing a fire that erupted on Saturday afternoon but was mostly contained on Sunday. Two teams of forest commandos, 67 firefighters and scores of volunteers backed by 22 fire brigade trucks, three helicopters and two planes were struggling to douse flames that had ripped through prime agricultural and forest land on the island fuelled by gale-force winds.
Greece has endured heatwave conditions for almost a week, with temperatures passing 40C (104F) in many areas. As flames approached, villagers were ordered to evacuate to safer areas, with 139 people, including tourists who were trapped on a beach, being rescued by the coast guard.
On Saturday, the temperature reached 45.2C in Amfilochia, in western Greece. The extreme heat is expected to die down from Monday. The meteorologist Panagiotis Yiannopoulos told ERT: “We are expecting the winds to get stronger right over Kythera and Crete, winds of six-beaufort strength from this evening until Tuesday evening, so a lot of very strong wind over many hours.”
Last month, fires on Greece’s fifth-biggest island Chios, in the northern Aegean, destroyed 4,700 hectares (11,600 acres) of land. In early July, a wildfire on Crete forced the evacuation of 5,000 people. In Turkey, where a record temperature of 50.5 C was registered in the province of Şirnak, in the south-east – surpassing a previous heat record of 49.5C in August 2023 – more than 1,700 people were forced to flee their homes after wildfires barrelled towards Bursa, the country’s fourth-largest city. Orhan Saribal, an opposition parliamentarian, described the scene as “an apocalypse”.
The most destructive year for wildfires was 2023, when nearly 175,000 hectares were lost and there were 20 deaths. More than 1,100 firefighters were battling the flames, with authorities saying that at least 76 blazes had broken out within a 24-hour period. Turkey has been hit by numerous heat-induced infernos for weeks.
On Sunday, Bursa’s mayor said a firefighter had died of a heart attack on the job, bringing the death toll from the blazes to 14. Ten of the victims were rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed on Wednesday in a fire in the west of the country.
Dozens of blazes were also reported in Albania over the weekend, where thousands were forced to evacuate homes in the southern town of Delvina.