After a long dry period, several large forest and bush fires broke out in the greater area of the Greek capital Athens on Monday. Civil protection ordered the evacuation of numerous residents, children’s summer camps in several villages in eastern Athens and near the seaside resort of Loutraki in the west of the capital were affected.
Houses also burned down there, as state television showed. After a relatively rainy and cool spring, these are the first major vegetation fires in Greece this year.
The conditions are difficult, mainly due to strong winds, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told journalists in Brussels on the sidelines of the EU-Latin America summit. The state apparatus is doing everything to contain the fires. “I would like to appeal to our citizens to follow the instructions of civil protection,” he said. The top priority in firefighting is the protection of human life. Only then would the protection of property and the environment come about. The fires are also a consequence of the climate crisis, which is being felt more and more intensely, he added.
Temperatures are expected to rise
“We are fighting around 20 forest and bush fires that also threaten inhabited regions,” said a spokesman for the fire brigade on state radio. Dozens of planes and helicopters are in use. Due to heavy smoke, the Patras-Athens highway near the town of Loutraki was temporarily closed.
The civil defense had already warned at the weekend: After several days with temperatures above 40 degrees and a longer dry period, strong winds started on Monday. The risk of fire is great – and because of the strong wind also the potentially rapid spread of fires.
On Monday it was largely bearable nationwide at around 35 degrees, but before that the thermometers had shown 44 degrees at the weekend in Crete and Athens, among other places. The next heat is imminent, meteorologists said. From Wednesday onwards the temperatures will rise again and next weekend it will again be more than 40 degrees in many places. Among other things, in the metropolis of Athens, temperatures are expected to rise to up to 44 degrees.
