Massive Greek forest fires kill at least 15
Forest fires whipped by gale-force winds killed at least 15 people in southern Greece today, including at least nine people who were trapped in their cars.
More than 150 fires burned across the country. The government appealed to the European Union to “send any help they can,” acting Interior Minister Spyros Flogaitis said after an emergency meeting of Greece’s civil protection department.
Hot, dry winds gusting to gale force prevented firefighting planes from taking off. Only ground forces were to fight the flames in the southern Peloponnese, with occasional help from helicopters and residents using their garden hoses.
A three-day heat wave, in which temperatures have touched 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), has left forests and shrub land parched.
At least nine people were killed and several others injured in a fire that broke out this afternoon in the western Peloponnese, near the town of Zaharo, the fire department said.
All were found in or near their cars, the department said, possibly after they became trapped as they tried to flee the flames.
Senior health ministry official Panagiotis Efstathiou said several people had also been injured.
“The next few hours will be critical,” he said.
Zaharo police said at least three villages in the region had been evacuated. Media reports said some villages were surrounded by flames and local hospitals had been put on alert.
In Greece’s deadliest day of forest fires for years, another six people died earlier Friday in the southern Peloponnese in a massive fire near the town of Areopolis.
Efstathiou said five were burned to death near a hotel on the outskirts of Areopolis, while a sixth – a firefighter – died of a heart attack.
The bodies of the five were too badly burned to be immediately identified, Efstathiou said.
All the hotels in Areopolis and part of the town were evacuated, as well as several villages in the area.
“The situation is dramatic,” fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said earlier in the day. He said firefighters were concentrating on blazes that threatened built-up areas.
In the rugged mountains of the southern Peloponnese, three major fires continued burning out of control on Friday evening: one near Areopolis, one on Mt Taigetos and another on Mt. Parnonas to the east. Authorities declared a state of emergency in two areas.
Several villages were evacuated. Major roads, including the highway between Sparta and the town of Kalamata in the south, were closed.
Local television footage showed residents with garden hoses joining firefighters to battle the flames.
On Taigetos, two firefighting planes in the area were unable to take off because of strong winds. Three water-dropping helicopters managed to fly only occasionally.
“The helicopters are operating whenever the weather conditions permit. ... The pilots are making incredible efforts,” Diamandis said.
Greece has suffered one of its worst summers for forest fires this year, with hundreds of blazes burning thousands of hectares of forest and brush land across the country.
Athens saw vast swaths of forest and shrub land on three of the four mountains ringing the sprawling capital go up in flames. A week-long blaze in June devastated large expanses of fir and pine forest in a national park on Mt. Parnitha, on the north-western fringes of Athens.
That fire in particular triggered widespread public anger over the government’s response – which many criticised as being inadequate and slow.
