As one of the world’s top travel destinations Greece has been suffering in the last week from ravaging fires that burned nearly 500,000 acres in the first three days, leaving behind a landscape of blackened tree trunks, gutted houses and dead livestock. At least 63 people have died during the past three days as Greece’s worst fires in living memory destroyed entire stretches of forest and emptied villages, hotels, camp sites and resorts. Across the country, hundreds of people were evacuated.
Others took refuge in churches and schools, while the Health Ministry was sending hundreds of tents to southern Greece to house those left homeless. The worst of the fires have been concentrated in the mountains of the Peloponnese in the south and on the island of Evia north of Athens. Strong winds blew smoke and ash over the capital, blackening the evening sky and turning the rising sun red.
In a nationally televised address on Saturday, Greek Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis said : “So many fires breaking out simultaneously in so many parts of the country cannot be a coincidence.[…] The state will do everything it can to find those responsible and punish them.” Fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis blamed arsonists for causing the fires. Investigations are being ordered to find out if the fires are a result of attacks that could be considered terrorism.
Anti-terror squads were already questioning 32 suspects as the Greek government offered rewards of up to 1,350,000 USD for information. Prior to this information, the Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis also declared that a 65 year old man was charged with arson and homicide in connection with a fire near the southern town of Areopolis on friday that killed six people and also that several people have been arrested on suspicion of arson although some were accused of starting fires through negligence rather than intent.
As suspicions arose concerning the arsonists and their reasons, Dimitris Karavellas, the Greek World Wildlife Fund’s director declared: ”Greeks still consider the forest as an area of land for development.” “We get situations where there are forest fires one year and nothing but houses a couple of years later” he also said.
These kind of statements only came to confirm some of the population ideas that some of the land scorched by the fire and now forest-free will be used for developing new building sites for houses, casinos or grand hotels.
Also the world heritage site of Olympia was under threat from the flames as the fire reached the hills overlooking the ancient Olympic Games birthplace.
Eventually firefighters were able to beat the ravaging flames which only skirted the site not damaging any of the ruins. The success of the brave firefighters is well represented in the previous photo of victory in front of the hills overwhelmed by wildfires and smoke.
