In parts of southern Europe, the situation in the fight against the fires appears to be easing slightly for the time being. Decreasing winds are providing a respite in Greece. But the danger is not over.
Athens / Istanbul / Rome / Geneva – After fighting countless major fires across the country for over a week, the situation in Greece eased slightly on Monday.
Among other things, the weather provided a respite – although the next heatwave was announced, the winds were only weak on Monday, so that new fires did not break out constantly or the fires were driven by gusts.
In the north of Athens, for which fire and rescue workers fought for days, it was still smoldering. The emergency services there were mainly busy extinguishing small sources of fire that flared up again and again so that they would not spread again. In the meantime, the flames continue to rage on Euboea. In the north of the island, however, so much forest had been burned that the fires slowly subsided because there was no more burning material, the Greek media reported on Monday afternoon. Other fires had reached the coast and therefore automatically came to an end, said the mayor of a village.
In some hilly and wooded regions, however, there is still severe fire and villages are threatened. In addition, fire-fighting helicopters are deployed south of the town of Limni on the west coast of the island against a large front of flames. On the Peloponnese peninsula, the particularly large fires on Monday could also be kept in check. But there is no all-clear; as soon as the wind picks up, the surrounding regions are again extremely endangered. The weather will make the situation even more difficult in the coming days: From Monday onwards, a new heat wave will begin in southern Europe, with temperatures in many places rising to over 40 degrees.
A drone video published on Monday by the Greek YouTube channel Up Stories in cooperation with the Greek weather authority shows the destruction on Evia from above: charred forests, destroyed houses, meter-high flames and clouds of smoke that darken the sky. A bird’s eye view shows how the fire partly destroyed the last trees on the coast before it ran out of food.
According to local authorities, the situation has eased in the coastal regions of Turkey affected by forest fires. The spokesman for the badly affected community of Milas, Umut Öztürk, told the German Press Agency on Monday that the fires in the region were largely under control. “The emergency services are in the process of cooling the area down.”
In view of the ongoing heat wave and drought, however, the risk of fire has not yet been banned. “There is a risk of further fires by October,” warned Doganay Tolunay, a forest engineer at Istanbul University. In the current fires, an estimated 1,500 square kilometers of land were destroyed – an area almost three times the size of Lake Constance. The cause of the fire is being investigated further.
In parts of Italy, the suspicion of deliberate arson seems to have been confirmed: the authorities are investigating arson after the evacuation of hundreds of people in Campomarino Lido on the Adriatic coast. There were too many outbreaks of fires for one to think of something man-made, said the president of the small region of Molise, Donato Toma, the Ansa news agency. According to the Adnkronos news agency, police in Sicily caught an arsonist in the act.
For the future, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a drastic picture in its new report: According to the IPCC, the temperature in Europe will rise faster than the global average. The frequency and intensity of heat extremes have already increased and will continue to increase, according to the report published on Monday. Precipitation will increase in winter in northern Europe but decrease in summer in the Mediterranean region and further north. dpa
