ATHENS: Greece on Sunday faced multiple fronts and a growing damage toll after a week of wildfires devastated over 12,000 hectares of forest and agricultural land, experts said.
The National Observatory’s climate tracker meteo.gr said over 6,500 hectares (16,000 acres) had been burned in separate fires on the Gulf of Corinth that swept through the popular coastal village of Porto Germeno near Athens.
The village was evacuated when the fire broke out on Friday but local authorities say scores of homes were damaged or destroyed.
Earlier this week, fires on the islands of Crete and Paros affected another 6,000 hectares, meteo.gr said.
With violent winds blowing for most of the week, firefighters have faced dozens of fires daily and Greece’s Civil Protection Minister Evangelos Tournas on Saturday said the fire department had been “pushed to its limits.”
