Firefighters battle blaze near Athens for second day

Yahoo

2 days ago

Hundreds of firefighters battled a deadly wildfire near Athens for a second day Saturday, with strong winds raising fears it could spread.
A fire department spokesman said more than 260 firefighters with nearly 80 fire engines and 12 aircraft were deployed near Keratea, a rural area some 43 kilometres (27 miles) southeast of Athens.
"The fire has weakened but there are still active pockets," the spokesman told AFP.
A new fire broke out close to the nearby town of Kouvaras on Saturday but was quickly brought under control.
Dimitris Loukas, mayor of the nearest city of Lavrio, said the Keratea fire that broke out Friday had devastated nearly 10,000 acres of brush and forest.
"Many homes were destroyed, in addition to other properties, agricultural and forest land," he told state news agency ANA.
The National Observatory in Athens on Saturday said the high winds will persist until at least Monday.
Firefighters and police evacuated dozens of people late Friday from homes and an elderly care centre as the flames neared the coastal resort of Palaia Fokaia.
Firefighters later found the remains of an elderly man in a hut near Keratea. He died in his bed, Loukas said.
Gale-force winds on Friday also caused the deaths of two Vietnamese tourists who fell into the sea at Sarakiniko beach on the Cycladic island of Milos.
The 61-year-old woman and 65-year-old man were on a cruise ship group visiting the lunar-like, volcanic rock beach, the coastguard said.
A coastguard spokeswoman told AFP the woman had fallen into the water, and the man had tried to help her.
Greece's national weather service EMY said winds of up to 74 kilometres (46 miles) an hour were forecast for Saturday.
The weather on Friday disrupted ferry travel for tens of thousands of summer holidaymakers.
A sailing ban on Athens ports was lifted Saturday.
Two dead as Greece battles growing wildfire front
'We knew it was dangerous'
In the municipality of Palaia Fokaia, an hour's drive south of Athens, a typical bucolic Greek landscape of olive groves and hamlets was also transformed by a raging Friday wildfire into a dystopia of blackened land and incinerated homes.
Observing them from his unscathed house was a relieved Kostas Triadis.
Despite the damage dealt to the landscape, he hailed the work of firemen and volunteers, "otherwise it would be very bad."
"It is regenerated by itself, I hope it will be the natural future," the 75-year-old added, referring to the devastated vegetation.
"It is a very good, small forest, we always knew it was dangerous."
His wife Eleni, 71, added that "everybody did their utmost to save the area, but the real tragedy is that the forest is lost. It was very old."
But she pointed to the many trees that were relatively unharmed because the fire burned itself out quickly in the short grass that residents had cut in June.
"It's a tragedy, it's the first time the fire has come here," she said of the area, where the couple spend the summer months away from their Athens residence.
A short distance away on the coast, the contrast could not be starker: beachgoers ambled on the sand and swam in the shimmering Mediterranean on a seemingly normal balmy summer morning.
But the signs of the emergency were unmistakeable as beachside diners were greeted with the spectacle of water bombers skimming the water to refill and return to the raging fires.
(AFP)