Bonfires started Fires in Greece It recedes in a limited way, while the firefighting teams confirmed that they maintain their alertness to face any emergency, especially since the wind element plays a major role in stopping or expanding the fire.
Greece has been facing continuous fires for two weeks on several fronts, including its tourist islands, Rhodes, Corfu and Evia. Since Wednesday, Thessaly, in the center of the country, has been added to it.
“At the moment we don’t have active hotspots, the general scene is improving, but we remain on alert to contain the fire,” a spokeswoman for the fire brigade told AFP on Friday.
A fire broke out near Volos in central-eastern Greece on Wednesday, an Air Force barracks in Nea Engialos, about 20 kilometers from Volos, causing successive explosions in an ammunition depot Thursday.
The coast guard said more than 130 people were evacuated Thursday evening by boat from the port of Nea Angelos.
Local media indicated that the fire in the barracks was contained, while the residents of Nea Anchialos began returning to their homes to assess the extent of damage to homes and shops, some of whose windows were shattered.
Burning tens of thousands of hectares
Electra Grecos, who was on the beach in Kalamis Bay near Nea Angelos, told how she saw clouds of smoke rising.
The woman, who lives in Belgium and was vacationing near her village on the other side of Volos, said she was still terrified, pointing to “the fear felt by everyone on the beach at the first explosion.” Then a series of explosions “of varying strength” occurred for two hours.
On Rhodes in the Aegean Sea, firefighters backed by water jets have been trying to contain a blaze that has been raging for more than a week in the south and east of the island.
And in the north of the island of Corfu in the Ionian Sea in northwest Greece, evacuations were carried out at the beginning of the week after a strong fire broke out at the end of last week, while a wave of heat hit the country for several days.
There are other countries on average that suffer from heat and fires, but Greece recorded a heat wave that lasted for more than ten days, the longest for the month of July, in recent decades in this country, according to experts.
Five people died in the fires in Greece, which destroyed about 50,000 hectares of forests and vegetation, according to the Athens Observatory.
On Friday, Pope Francis expressed concern about the fires in Greece, urging people to step up efforts to take care of the planet.
And the Vatican published a telegram to the Greek Archbishop, Archbishop Petros Stefano, in which Francis expressed his concern “about the threats to life and the destruction due to the fires that spread in different regions of the country, as a result of the severe heat wave that is currently hitting a number of European countries.”
The temperature began to decline on Thursday, after it reached 45 degrees Celsius at the end of last week, and it is expected that Friday it will not exceed 37 degrees Celsius, according to the National Meteorological Service, while the wind speed will sometimes reach 60 kilometers per hour.
The Greek Prime Minister’s circles said that one of the collateral repercussions of the fire crisis was the resignation of the Minister of Citizen Protection, Notis Mitarakis, on Friday, “for personal reasons, but this resignation is linked to a vacation taken during these difficult days.”
France 24/AFP
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2023-07-28 16:39:40
