Halfway control on the Canary Island of Tenerife and in Canada, new concerns in Greece: In the currently largest forest fire areas there is still no all-clear.
Greece
With sometimes stormy winds, at least five large forest fires in Greece continued to spread uncontrollably during the night. The north-east Greek port city of Alexandroupolis was particularly hard hit on Tuesday morning. There, the fire, which has been burning for the fourth straight day, has reached settlements near the city. Firefighters and residents battled the blazes throughout the night, state television showed. Numerous towns were evacuated.
The city’s university hospital also had to be evacuated during the night – 175 people, including children and infants, were accommodated on a ferry or transferred to hospitals in other cities, as reported by the Skai broadcaster.
The major fires in the Dadia National Park in the north-east of the country continue to rage unchecked. According to media reports, a migrant died there from smoke poisoning. Migrants who entered Greece illegally from Turkey via the border river Evros are always hiding in the forest of Dadia.
The plumes of smoke from the massive source of fire are so large that they can still be clearly seen hundreds of kilometers away, as satellite images have shown. In the morning, the wind drove the clouds of smoke across central Greece far out to the Ionian Sea in the west.
Fires are also raging on the second largest Greek island of Euboea, near the port city of Kavala, on the island of Kythnos and in the Boeotia region northwest of the capital Athens. Tenerife
Canada
Control, but no all-clear for the fires in the south of the Canadian province of British Columbia. At least 50 buildings have been destroyed in the past few days, local Prime Minister David Eby said on Monday – but the number could rise.
“It’s safe to assume that most, if not all, of these buildings are residential,” Eby said. The situation had recently eased somewhat due to the deployment of many rescue workers, especially in the city of West Kelowna. Residents and authorities are also hoping for rain that is forecast for today.
Canada has been battling wildfires in several parts of the country for months. Tens of thousands of people have already had to evacuate their homes in several affected areas in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. The air quality also decreased rapidly. The military is now deployed there to provide logistical support for firefighting.
