The battle to douse wildfires raging for a third day around Athens has intensified as water bombers flown in from Italy and France joined the operation to extinguish flames often fanned by strong winds.
Firefighters, backed by soldiers, police special forces, volunteers and water-dropping aircraft, resumed efforts to contain blazes that by Wednesday had encroached on the town of Megara. The fire, which initially broke out in Dervenochoria, about 18 miles (30km) north of the Greek capital, had ripped through land turned tinder dry by temperatures that surpassed 40C (104F) last week.
By late Tuesday a fire front stretching for more than five miles had spurred mass evacuations and decimated homes, cars, olive groves and pine forests in the area of Mandra, where police could be seen helping panic-stricken residents get into vehicles as the flames approached. “We are living a nightmare,” the mayor of Mandra, Christos Stathis, told Open TV. “Houses and properties are on fire.”
In dramatic scenes overnight, firefighting forces had battled to stop flames reaching a coastal complex of oil refineries close to Corinth, with Skai TV reporting the blaze had come within 500 metres (1,600ft) of the installation. “Last night men and women in civil protection [forces] and all the state machinery made a superhuman effort,” said the climate crisis and civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias. “The efforts will continue because climatic conditions are expected to be difficult today.”
Fires were on Wednesday reported to have come “within a breath” of homes in Megara, with Greek media describing a 4km front of flames on the periphery of the 30,000-strong town. Constantly shifting winds made the work of firefighters that much harder. “We evacuated the area in time,” said Megara’s mayor, Grigorios Stamoulis, appealing for more aircraft to be dispatched to the area. “Aerial means are the only ones that can act and bring about a decisive result. Ground forces can’t stop the fire in the forest.”
Authorities said firefighters were also battling flare-ups in the region of Loutraki, where at least 32 homes were burned to the ground and a state of emergency was declared on Tuesday, while fires were also reported on the islands of Rhodes and Crete. On order of the fire brigade three villages were evacuated on Rhodes because the blazes were deemed to be out of control. “Conditions are extreme and are likely to remain so for another week,” Kostas Tsigas, who heads the fire brigade officers’ association, told Skai TV.
In a week that has highlighted the realities of the climate emergency, thousands have been forced to flee homes as a result of the forest fires and countless others have lost properties they have worked a lifetime to acquire. On Monday, as Etesian winds blew in after a four-day heatwave, fires had ripped through seaside towns south-east of Athens, gutting holiday homes and leaving a trail of disaster in their wake.
“We have always had wildfires and we always will,” said the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, cutting short a visit to Brussels to return to Athens, where he held emergency talks with Kikilias on Wednesday. “But with the effects of the climate crisis, we are experiencing fires with increasing intensity.”
Greece is poised for a second heatwave once winds drop on Thursday. Temperatures are forecast to reach 44C over the weekend, with Greek meteorologists saying the worst is yet to come. “Although the winds will recede from tomorrow [Thursday] this doesn’t mean that the danger of fires will lessen,” the forecaster Theodoros Yiannaros told state-run TV. “There will be a drop in danger perhaps tomorrow but during the weekend the risk will be very high … difficult times are ahead of us.”
Greek culture ministry officials told the Guardian it was “likely” the Acropolis in Athens would once again be closed to the public if temperatures were deemed dangerously high.
