Another three Greek firefighters died last Wednesday while tackling wildfires in Crete and on the Peloponnese, a rugged peninsula in southern Greece.
While a fire that has been burning since Friday around Porto Germeno on the Gulf of Corinth some 60 kilometers northwest of Athens has subsided, on Saturday the flames crossed a mountain to the south, fanned by strong winds of up to 130 kilometers per hour, and reached the settlement of Veniza closer to the capital. According to initial estimates, the fire has destroyed around 200 houses in the area.
On Sunday flames spread rapidly through western Attica, a region that encompasses Athens, threatening communities and an industrial district outside Megara, about 30 kilometers from the capital. Speaking on state TV Ert, the president of the firefighters’ federation, Nikos Lavranos, described it as a “huge front” and a “black blanket covering an area of around [25 acres.”
Dozens of settlements have been evacuated, and firefighters are focusing on preventing the flames from advancing toward Megara, pop. 30,000. Greece’s firefighting service said more than 2,500 people had been evacuated in western Attica by late Sunday afternoon.
“Unfortunately, we have uncontrolled fires in far too many areas. As soon as the fire brigade arrives at one spot, just as the fire is being brought under control, it flares up again in another spot,” Megara Mayor Panagiotis Margetis told Open TV.
Firefighters were also fighting another blaze in the Peloponnese on Sunday as well as on the island of Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea between Greece and Italy. More than 500 firefighters have been deployed across Greece.