As the devastating summer fire raged from the south, thousands of people fled the wildfire, which is destroying large pine forests and houses in Evia, the second largest island in Greece. Europe To Siberia.
Nikos Hardalias, the Deputy Minister of Civil Defense of Greece, said on Sunday: “We still have a difficult night, another difficult night,” he added, adding that nearly a week after the fire started, strong winds are pushing The two main lines of fire in the north and the north. South of the island.
Seventeen firefighting aircraft and helicopters operated on the island northeast of the capital Athens, where the fire in the northern suburbs and the nearby Peloponnese area was stable, but the risk of reigniting remains high.
As the region has experienced the most extreme heat wave in three decades, wildfires have destroyed large areas of southern Europe for two weeks. Ten people died in Greece and Turkey, and many were hospitalized. Italy also suffered millions of euros in losses.
In the past few weeks, a huge fire broke out in Siberia in northern Russia, forcing more than a dozen villages to evacuate on Saturday. This year, Russia’s wildfires have destroyed nearly 6 million hectares (15 million acres) of land, and hot, dry, and windy conditions have also contributed to the devastating fires in California.
Rain eased the situation Turkey Last weekend, but experts believe that record temperatures related to the climate crisis are still increasing in Greece. On Sunday, a helicopter flew an injured firefighter from Mount Parnitha in northern Athens.
The Coast Guard has evacuated more than 2,000 people from the sea, including 349 people on Sunday morning. They evacuated from dense Evia (a popular summer resort). The ferry waited for more people to evacuate because hell forced the authorities to order residents. Leaving the village of dozens of people.
Later on Sunday, a Greek Coast Guard vessel patrolling the coast of Evia rescued 23 others who were trapped on the beach. The Coast Guard stated that the temperature was as high as 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) and the weather was dry. Three patrol boats, four naval vessels, a ferry, two tourist boats, and fishing and private boats were preparing to evacuate from the northern coastal village of Pefki. Multiple people.
“I’m very angry. I lost my home…everything will not be the same the next day,” a resident Vasilikia told a local reporter on a rescue ferry. “This is a disaster. It is huge. Our village has been destroyed, and our homes and our property have nothing.”
260 firefighters from Greece and 200 firefighters from Ukraine and Romania fought the fire, and young people carried the elderly and frail residents to a safe place on the beach. Others fled their villages on foot in a doomsday scene overnight.
Witnesses said the heat was so high that the water evaporated before it reached the fire. The governor of central Greece, Fanis Spanos, said the situation in the northern part of the island was “very difficult” for nearly a week.
“The front is huge, and the area of land burned is huge,” Spanos said. He said that more than 2,500 people have checked into hotels and other shelters. Greece has dispatched troops to assist in the fire fighting, and 10 countries including France, Egypt, Switzerland, Spain, and the United Kingdom have sent personnel and aircraft to assist.
Hadalias said conditions in Evia are particularly difficult for firefighting planes and helicopters. Their pilots face “extreme danger” with limited visibility, air turbulence and strong winds from fires, he said.
On Sunday, Serbia announced that it would send 13 vehicles, 37 firefighters, and 3 firefighting helicopters to Greece. In the past 10 days, 56,655 hectares of land in Greece have been burned, while the average area from 2008 to 2020 is 1,700 hectares.
The cause of the fire is being investigated, and several people believe it was caused deliberately. Greek police spokesman Apostolos Skrekas said that 10 people were arrested on suspicion of arson, including a 71-year-old man in Messinia, Peloponnese; Nine people are being questioned. He said that 500 police officers have been sent to monitor areas where the fire has been extinguished.
The mayor of Mantoudi in Evia, Giorgos Tsapourniotis, told local media that many villages on Evia were saved only because young people ignored the evacuation order and stayed to keep the fire away from their homes.
Many villagers criticized the response of the authorities. “The country does not exist,” Yannis Selimis, a village from the northern part of the island, told AFP. “In the next 40 years, we will have no jobs, and in winter, we will be flooded without protecting our forests.”
In Turkey, firefighters earlier described the arduous efforts of many people. Günaydın Sözen, 48, of the Istanbul Fire Department, told the Guardian that he had been a firefighter for 21 years but had never been called to fight wildfires before.
He said he and 24 department colleagues helped Extinguish fire near Kemerköy Thermal Power Plant During the five days in Mugla province, “worked day and night…the area of the fire was so large, it created its own climate, and the sea breeze produced more wind, which actually made the fire more intense”.
Sözen said that because of the olive tree, the behavior of the fire “occurs in a different way.” They are very greasy, so flushing the bark with a hose is not enough-they burn inside because of the oil, so we have to get close enough to let the water run down the trunk from the top. “
He said the locals provided “great help”, everything from food to cold water to clean shirts. But his team “saw so many dead creatures, lizards, everything you can think of,” he said. “We saved a turtle.”
Yusuf Doğan Gürer, 36, deputy chief of Avrupa Yakasi (European side) Istanbul Fire Department, said that firefighters have pushed their vehicles and their bodies to the limit, trying to get as close as possible to the fire.
“You need to be in good physical condition, much better than what we are used to in the city,” he said. “We had to evacuate the area three times-this never happened when we were working anywhere else. Once, we were trapped in the flames.”
He said the experience was difficult, but “taught us a lot. The way flames move, and how fast they move, are things we need to adapt to. The phone doesn’t work properly, so it’s difficult to coordinate. As long as we need it, we Will stay here.”
Agence France-Presse, Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report
