ATHENS (AP) — A helicopter swooped into a village in southern Greece yesterday to rescue residents trapped by flames from one of dozens of fires that have torn through villages and forests across the country, leaving blackened landscapes in their wake.
The fires have killed 63 persons over four days, destroying everything in their path. One broke out on the fringe of Athens yesterday, but was quickly brought under control. Another scorched the woodland around the birthplace of the Olympics.
A helicopter airlifted five persons to safety from the village of Prasidaki in southern Greece, said fire department spokesman Yiannis Stamoulis. Another was sent to the village of Frixa.
Fueled by strong, hot winds and parched grass and trees, the fires have engulfed villages, forests and farmland. New blazes broke out faster than others could be brought under control.
“The whole village is burning. It’s been burning for three days,” one sobbing woman said, clutching her 20-month-old daughter as they sheltered in a church along with dozens of others near Figalia, in the western Peloponnese.
Dimitris Papangelopoulos, who is responsible for prosecuting terrorism and organized crime, ordered an investigation to determine “whether the crimes of arsonists and of arson attacks on forests” could come under Greece’s counterterrorism law, the Public Order Ministry said.
Forest fires are common during Greece’s hot, dry summers, but nothing has approached the scale of the past three days.
“So many fires breaking out simultaneously in so many parts of the country cannot be a coincidence,” Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a nationally televised address on Saturday.
Building on forestland is forbidden in Greece, but unscrupulous developers are blamed for setting fires to forests in an effort to circumvent the law by disputing the area’s status. Greece has no land registry, so once a region has been burned and cleared, there is no definitive proof of whether it was initially forest, farm or field.
From Sunday morning to yesterday morning alone, 89 new fires broke out, fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said.
“This is an immense ecological disaster,” said Theodota Nantsou, Greece conservation manager for the World Wildlife Fund. “We had an explosive mixture of very adverse weather conditions, tinder-dry forests — to an extent not seen for many years — combined with the wild winds of the past two weeks. It’s a recipe to burn the whole country.”
The government appealed for help from abroad, and 19 countries were sending planes, helicopters and firefighters. France dispatched four water-tanker planes, and Russia was sending three helicopters and an amphibious plane.
The fires hit during the traditional August holidays when villages across Greece are filled with people from Athens and other large cities returning to their ancestral areas.
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