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ATHENS/LONDON: Three firefighters died battling forest blazes in Greece on Wednesday as several other fires broke out around the country, fed by gale-force winds.
The fire department said two firefighters had died on the island of Crete “during an operation to contain a rural forest fire.” A third firefighter was found unconscious near the Peloponnese port of Gytheio, a fire department spokesman said, with media reports saying he had died of pathological causes.
State TV ERT said the two men on Crete had been trapped by the flames in their fire engine in the foothills of a mountain near the western city of Rethymno. “Two firefighters fell in the line of duty,” deputy fire department spokesman Yiannis Artopios said.
Local municipal official Sifis Vavourakis told ERT the fire front near Rethymno was over 15 kilometres (nine miles) long and was “out of control”. Over 150 firefighters and eight aircraft had been dispatched, the fire department said. But the winds complicated efforts to fight the fire from the air, local mayor Yiannis Tatarakis told ERT, adding that six villages had been evacuated.
