Greece wildfires: dozens dead as holiday resort devastated

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: The Guardian

At least 49 people have been killed, scores more injured and almost 700 others rescued from the sea after a devastating wildfire swept through a small resort town near Athens.

Huge flames trapped families with children as they tried to flee from Mati, 18 miles (29 km) east of the Greek capital, where the blaze hit on Monday afternoon. It was by far the country’s worst fire since fires raged across the southern Peloponnese peninsula in August 2007, killing dozens.

“We will do whatever is humanly possible to control it,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told reporters, adding that a state of emergency had been declared in the Attica region - which includes Athens - and that “all emergency forces” had been mobilised.

Greece has also invoked European Union civil protection agreements to seek help from it EU peers. A military transport plane is due to arrive with 60 firefighters from Cyprus, while two water-dropping planes are expected from Spain.



Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/23/greeks-urged-to-leave-homes-as-wildfires-spread-near-athens

[herding cats]

1. This is horrific.

"

Mati doesn’t even exist as a settlement anymore,” one woman told Skai TV. “I saw corpses, burned-out cars. I feel lucky to be alive.”

Mati is in the Rafina region, which is popular with local tourists, particularly pensioners and children at holiday camps.

“I personally saw at least 100 homes in flames,” said Evangelos Bournous, the mayor of the Rafina-Pikermi area. “I saw it with my eyes, it is a total catastrophe.”

I can't find the the words... heartbreaking.

[secondwind]

2. Fires are everywhere, it seems. Sweden is in flames 🔥 also.

High temperatures everywhere, it seems.

[herding cats]

3. We're all baking, and burning up.

There are literally fires and record temps all around me, too. Not this bad, of course, but the point still stands.

[appalachiablue]

4. Europe taking an awful heat and fire beating..

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. When the Fire Comes

Mati (the name means ‘eye’ in Greek) was once a forest. Starting in the 1950s, the area was gradually and illegally developed, with no planning, no proper licensing, no supervision. Successive governments (including the current one) rewarded arson and landgrabs by allowing the culprits to hold on to the spoils. But the people living there now are unlikely to be aware of all this.

So they are naturally asking: where is the state? Where is the infrastructure? And here we find crime number two: a decade of austerity has drastically reduced the Greek fire service; firefighters often work on seasonal contracts, and in some cases their budget is so stretched they have to buy their own boots. Combined with what appears to have been a severe lack of co-ordination between the various services in the first few crucial hours, the cuts have cost lives.
...
Unregulated development has led to lots of alleys that stop in dead ends, narrow streets and no solid evacuation plan that people could follow. Access to the beach is very often cut off too, to keep parts of it ‘private’ for wealthier residents. Locals have said that in some cases you might need to walk miles to find access to the shore. Twenty-six people were found dead in a field, huddled together, having failed to find a passage through the fences to the shore. Inequality was among the factors that killed them.

We will see more fires like these. Climate change is making the dry season drier, in Greece and elsewhere. We’re not taking it seriously enough, because we have ‘other problems’. Life is too hard to think about stuff like this. And it’s true, it is. But we should also be asking ourselves: when the fire comes, where will we go?

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/07/26/yiannis-baboulias/when-the-fire-comes/

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Greek fires: Blaze that killed 83 'caused by arson'

Greece has "serious indications" that a fire that killed at least 83 people near Athens earlier this week was started deliberately, Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas says.
...
Some 60 people are still being treated in hospital, 11 in intensive care. Dozens more are missing.

Earlier, rescue workers searching a cliffside in the seaside town of Mati found more human remains.
...
"This is a crime from the past," he said. "This coast of Athens, all these properties, the majority are without a licence, and they have occupied the coast without rules."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44971351