International effort halts wildfire spread
HUNDREDS of firefighters from across Europe and the Middle East worked alongside Greek colleagues in rugged terrain yesterday to contain flare-ups of the huge wildfires that ravaged Greece’s forests for a week, destroying homes and forcing evacuations.
The spread of the blazes has been largely halted, officials said, but fronts still burned on the large island of Evia and in Greece’s southern Peloponnese region.
The fires broke out last week and other nearby nations such as Turkey and Italy also faced similar searing temperatures and quickly spreading fires, while Spain and Portugal were on alert for wildfires amid a heatwave forecast to last through Monday.
At the other end of the
Mediterranean, in Algeria, wildfires killed 42 people on Tuesday.
Greece’s government said a total of 900 firefighters were in action on Evia, and a further 600 firefighters from Greece, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, France and Germany were deployed yesterday near ancient Olympia and in Arcadia in the Peloponnese.