North of Athens on Sunday at around 3pm local time fire. So close to the city that the sky above it was covered with thick smoke. The fire in the vicinity of Varnavas moved very quickly – “like lightning” according to the fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis. This was made possible by strong, gusty winds and dry, hot weather conditions, which are expected to last until Thursday. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis cut short his vacation and returned to the country.
Greece is burning
More than 400 firefighters, supported by 16 firefighting aircraft and 13 helicopters, fought the fire until late in the evening. The operation was suspended for the night, and the services were supposed to resume in the morning. The evacuation of thousands of people from the areas northeast of Athens, in the Attica region, was ordered. In the morning (around 4:00 a.m. local time), more residents of areas even closer to Athens were given SMS with the information: “Forest fire nearby. Follow the instructions of the authorities.” The children's hospital in Penteli was also evacuated.
The flames, reaching up to 25 meters high, engulfed trees, bushes, but also houses and cars. “The village was surrounded in the blink of an eye, in the blink of an eye. It's really windy,” Varnavas resident Katerina Fylaktou told Reuters. “It started from one point and suddenly the whole village was surrounded,” she added. The fire was moving towards Marathon and the main reservoir water for Athens.
Weather and climate
Half of Greece is under a “red alert” until Thursday, warning of an increased risk of wildfires, said Vassilis Kikilias, Minister for the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection.
This is not the first fire this season in Greece. There have been hundreds of them since May (40 since Saturday alone!), on the mainland and on the islands. The country is exceptionally dry. The winter was the warmest on record, as were the last two full months – June and February. The entire summer could be record-breaking in this respect. Moreover, a heat wave is sweeping across the entire Mediterranean region, including exceptionally hot Spain.
According to experts, the frequency and intensity of extreme events are increasing phenomena weather events, such as drought- and heat-induced wildfires, can be linked to climate change. As the climate warms, heatwaves become more severe. According to the international group World Weather Attribution, which studies the links between extreme weather weather with climate change, the heatwave in Mexico that killed at least 100 people this year was made much more likely by global warming.
Sources: portal Ekathimerini, Reuters, Associated Press, BBC.