Scores of firefighters, backed by water-dropping aircraft, battled two forest fires in northern Greece, as authorities warned that the western Ionian Sea islands faced a major wildfire risk on Wednesday.
The Fire Service said three water-bombing aircraft were assisting more than 30 firefighters with eight fire engines on the ground Tuesday trying to tame a blaze in the Xirolivado region near the northern town of Veria.
Another helicopter was flying sorties to help 15 firefighters with three fire engines extinguish a fire near the village of Krya Vryssi in the Zagori region of northwestern Greece.
Two brush fires were also burning in the vicinity of Kavala in northeastern Greece and Larissa in Thessaly. The bigger one, near the village of Vryssi in the Kavala region, mobilised four water-dropping aircraft and 34 firefighters.
Civil protection authorities set the Ionian islands, including Corfu, Zakynthos, Kefalonia and Lefkada, on a category-4 state of wildfire risk for Wednesday, on Greece’s five-notch scale. Most of the rest of the country – including the Greater Athens region, the Aegean Sea islands, Crete and large tracts of the Peloponnese – was on category 3.
