A firestorm leaves a trail of devastation in northern Athens. Despite the extinguishing work, the danger persists.
The tables were festively set. In the evening a wedding should be celebrated on the terrace of the popular restaurant in the Athens suburb of Varybobi. But the fire came before the guests and the bride and groom. The staff was just able to get to safety. When the innkeeper returned to his restaurant on Wednesday morning, everything was in flames: the tablecloths charred, glasses, plates and cutlery blackened with soot. Only the metal frame remains of the upholstered chairs.
On Wednesday, the once idyllic areas of northern Athens, which had been swept away by a firestorm the previous evening, presented a picture of utter devastation. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke of a “nightmare on the outskirts of the city”. The fire broke out on Tuesday lunchtime near the suburb of Acharnes for an as yet unexplained cause. At temperatures of over 40 degrees and fanned by a north-westerly wind, the flames spread rapidly in the forest and bush areas.
520 firefighters were involved in fighting the fire. The military was also on duty. In many places, residents tried to defend their gardens and houses against the flames with water hoses.
Despite the massive use of fire-fighting planes, the fire, which was raging on four fronts, spread to residential areas in northern Athens in the evening. Four villages had to be evacuated. The civil protection authority asked residents in the endangered areas to leave their homes with text messages and acoustic cell phone warnings.
Fire-fighting aircraft
The EU is helping Spain, Italy, Greece and Turkey fight forest fires. Two fire-fighting planes from Sweden are helping in Greece, Turkey is getting help from planes from Croatia and Spain. The fire-fighting aircraft are part of the “rescEU” fleet, which is provided by six EU countries and co-financed by the EU Commission.
Karlheinz Busen, forest policy spokesman for the FDP, calls for German participation in the emergency system. “The forest fires that are currently raging in the European Mediterranean and in Turkey have already assumed devastating proportions,” said Busen to the editorial network in Germany. lkö
This alarm system was developed by civil defense in Greece after the devastating fire in the Athens suburb of Mati, in which almost 100 people died three years ago. With the system, people are warned of imminent dangers in a targeted manner using text messages and strong acoustic signals from their mobile phones. It is mainly thanks to this alarm system, according to experts, that the fires in the suburbs of Athens have so far not resulted in any deaths.
Thanks to the early warnings, thousands were able to flee the flame front in their cars. Others were taken to safety by bus. Firefighters, volunteers and the military fought the flames all night. The fire-fighting planes and helicopters could also be used again at dawn.
“The fires are now largely under control,” said Nikos Chardalias, Greek Deputy Minister for Civil Protection and head of the civil protection agency, on Wednesday morning. Prime Minister Mitsotakis thanked the men and women of the fire brigades for their commitment. “We faced an extremely dangerous fire in an extreme heat wave condition,” Mitsotakis said. It is “positive that we haven’t had a single human life to complain about because the evacuations worked in an exemplary manner”. The prime minister promised to help rebuild the burned houses and to reforest the cremated forests.
According to an initial assessment, the civil defense chief Chardalias drew on Wednesday afternoon, around 1250 hectares of forest and scrubland as well as usable areas burned down. 76 houses and 27 businesses were badly damaged.
There is still no reliable information about the causes of the fire disaster. Given the severe drought and extreme temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius, even a carelessly discarded cigarette butt can cause a fire. But land speculation is suspected behind many fires in Greece. For example, forest areas are to be transformed into lucrative building land with a fuse.
Even if the fire brigades managed to bring the fires near Athens under control on Wednesday, the danger is not over yet. There are still pockets of embers everywhere. A rising wind could fan them again. And the heat wave is not expected to subside until the weekend.
