Hundreds of firefighters in Greece were yesterday battling to save a popular coastal resort northwest of Athens as violent winds continued to lash the country, hampering operations.The fire department said more than 300 firefighters were operating in the area of Porto Germeno, about 70km northwest of Athens in the region of Viotia.“The fire has reached the sea... homes have certainly been damaged,” a fire department spokesman said. “The winds are very strong. Aircraft are trying to operate as best they can, but some are unable to and have been transferred to another fire [in the Peloponnese] where conditions are milder.”
A hotel in Agios Pavlos, Crete, that was destroyed by wildfire is pictured on Thursday.
According to meteo.gr, the weather service of the National Observatory of Athens, winds up to 130kph were recorded yesterday.The fire broke out on Friday near the neighboring coastal village of Agios Vasileios. Residents initially ignored a civil protection call to evacuate, and about 300 people had to be rescued by sea.
Wildfire meteorologist and National Observatory of Athens senior researcher Theodore Giannaros said the damage to the Porto Germeno area was “inconceivable.”“The area that has been affected appears to exceed 4-5,000 hectares,” he said.Wildfires have flared in several parts of the country this week, including on the popular island of Crete, and three firefighters have so far lost their lives.The fires in Crete have affected nearly 5,000 hectares on the island, meteo.gr said. Another fire on the tourist island of Paros earlier this week burned nearly 1,000 hectares, it added.A maximum fire risk alert was issued yesterday for the greater Athens area, parts of the Peloponnese and Crete, central Greece and the border region with Turkey.Greece’s geography, with its hundreds of islands, complicates the rapid deployment of emergency responders.Hit hard by the climate crisis like the rest of the Mediterranean region, the country is plagued by wildfires every summer due to high temperatures, frequent heat waves and drought.Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned that Greece — which had been relatively spared from heat waves and major fires earlier this summer, unlike France and Spain — was headed for “difficult days.”
