Greek fires rage on
An elderly woman reacts as a wildfire approaches her house in the village of Gouves, on the island of Evia, where thousands of acres of forest have been burnt to ashes. The Greek government has come under attack from the public for its slow response to rampaging fires that have swept through large swathes of the country
GREEKS expressed fury yesterday over what they said was the government’s slow response to the huge wildfires that have devastated vast swathes of the country.
There was particular anger on the large island of Evia, north of Athens, where thousands of acres of forest have been burnt to ashes and more than 2,000 people had to evacuate.
“We were completely forsaken. There were no fire brigades, there were no vehicles, nothing,” said David Angelou, who was staying in the seaside village of Pefki before escaping by ferry to the mainland. “You could feel the enormous heat, there was also a lot of smoke,” he explained.
Dozens of locals from the village spent the early hours of yesterday morning sleeping on loungers on the nearby beach or dozing on the deck of a ferry sent to rescue them.
“We’ve been begging the State for five days to send more aircraft. We’re on our own,” said Giannis Gkotzias, mayor of Istiaia, a town in the north of the island. “We only saw them for half a day, after days of dramatic calls. We haven’t put out a single fire front. We’re just waiting for the fire to reach the shores to say that this is over,” he told Greek Reporter, a news website.
The government said water-bombing planes and helicopters faced exceptionally difficult conditions because of high winds and low visibility caused by billowing clouds of smoke.
A team of 21 British firefighters who arrived in Greece on Sunday had been told they would be deployed to Evia but were diverted to tackle fire in the Peloponnese region, further south.