Grim search: Death toll hits 81 in Greek fires near Athens
A woman tries to save what she can Wednesday in Neos Voutzas, a village near Athens.
MATI, Greece — Rescuers intensified a grim house-to-house search Wednesday for more casualties from a deadly forest fire outside Athens, as the country’s military said it was using footage from U.S. combat drones and surveillance aircraft to try to determine whether arsonists were behind the blaze and stop future attacks.
Joint patrols of the Fire Service, army personnel and volunteer rescuers discovered more bodies in the gutted homes near the port of Rafina east of Athens, raising the death toll to 81.
Nikos Giannopoulos stood with his wife and two children outside the destroyed home of his mother, waiting for news as rescuers searched each room. They found her charred body in the bathroom. Giannopoulos had searched the home earlier but failed to spot his mother’s body.
“She died helpless, an 88-year-old woman. I lost my nearby home in the fire, and my mother’s was burned too,” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “So many people died that it took the rescuers three days to find her.”
The fire forced hundreds to sprint to sea for safety, swimming out into the rough waters to avoid the suffocating smoke until they were picked up by boats after nightfall. Divers and coast guard patrols were still searching Wednesday for bodies at sea.
Tawefik Halil, 42, was among dozens of fishermen who responded to the overwhelmed Greek coast guard’s urgent call for volunteers to help save save hundreds of people stranded on beaches and in the choppy waters, buffeted by gale-force winds.
The fishermen, Halil said, were confronted by cries for help that pierced the choking smoke as dozens of people bobbed in the sea. Children held onto adults, and people who couldn’t swim clung to those who could.
“It was chaos, do you understand? Do you know what it’s like to be in all that smoke, not being able to see anything and to have people asking for help?” Halil said Wednesday.
Halil said he and the others did what they could as they plucked young and old from the water.
“You can’t see anything in the smoke and fire — so much fire and so much smoke. There was so much wind,” he said. “We could not breathe. I almost fainted at some point from all the smoke, and it was very difficult, my friend, it was so difficult.”
Halil, an Egyptian who has been living in Greece and working as a fisherman for two decades, said it was his second time dealing with a humanitarian disaster; the first was helping to rescue Syrian migrants after their flimsy boat capsized off the Greek island of Chios in 2015.
Flags across Greece, including those at parliament, public hospitals and the ancient Acropolis in Athens, flew at half-staff after Prime Minister AlexisTsipras declared three days of national mourning.
Firefighting planes from Italy and Romania and fire patrols from Cyprus joined the Greek effort Wednesday, while Defense Minister Panos Kammenos announced that U.S. surveillance aircraft had also assisted in the firefighting effort and were gathering footage to try to determine whether Monday’s fire had been started deliberately.