Greece Afire!

"Given that there have been no reports of a missing person or missing residents from the surrounding areas, the possibility is being investigated that these are people who had entered the country illegally."

Ioannis Artopios, spokesman, fire department, Avanta area

 

"When we add the fires in Canada, the United States, Africa, Asia and Australia to those in Europe, it seems that the situation is getting worse every year."

Antonello Fiore, president,  Italian Society of Environmental Geology

Helicopters fly over as wildfire rages near Alexandroupolis, northern Greece, on August 21, 2023. Sakis Mitrolidis/AFP/Getty Images

 The bodies of 18 people were discovered by firefighters scouring the area of a major wildfire in northeastern Greece, burning out of control Tuesday for a fourth day. Authorities were left to consider whether the group remains might be those of migrants who had entered Greece through its nearby border with Turkey.

Hundreds of firefighters were battling dozens of wildfires breaking out across the country, with galeforce winds fanning the flames. Two people died on Monday while two firefighters were injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece. The 18 bodies were found in the Avanta area of the city of Alexandroupolis.

The hot, dry summers of southern Europe are especially susceptible to wildfires. Across Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands, another major blaze has been burning for a week, with no injuries or home damage yet reported. Blame is being placed by European Union officials squarely on climate change to explain the increasing frequency and intensity of European wildfires.

Police activated Greece's Disaster Victim Identification Team in hopes of identifying the 18 bodies discovered close to a shack in the Avanta area. Alexandroupolis sits close to Greece's border with Turkey, along a route frequently used by people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, seeking to enter the European Union.

Many villages and settlements close by Avanta were under evacuation orders, push alerts sent to mobile phones. A massive wall of flames raced overnight through forests toward Alexandroupolis that prompted authorities to evacuation an additional eight villages along with the city's hospital. The sky over the city was flaming red and choking smoke with swirling ash flecks filled the atmosphere.

Firefighters battle flames during a wildfire near Prodromos on August 21, 2023. Spyros Bakalis/AFP/Getty Images

The city's hospital transported 65 of its over 100 patients to a ferry boat docked at the city's port; mores were taken to other hospitals in northern Greece. Another 20 patients were ferried to the port town of Kavala, to be transferred from there to yet another hospital. Speaking on Greece's Skal television the country's deputy health minister explained that the Alexandroupolis hospital moved its patients elsewhere given the smoke and ash circulating, as a threat to health toward already compromised people.

 

Patrol boats and private vessels evacuated another 40 people by sea from areas west of Alexandroupolis, ferrying them to the port. Satellite imagery showed smoke from a fire burning through forest in a protected national park, blanketing northern and western Greece. Woodland northwest of Athens and at an industrial area on the capital's western fringes were susceptible to new fires that broke through in parts of the country.

From the industrial area of Aspropyrgos, small explosions resounded as flames reached warehouses and factories, authorities shutting down a highway and ordering the evacuation of nearby villages. Greece, with its firefighting forces stretched to the limit, appealed for help from the civil protection mechanism of the European Union.

The response was five firefighting planes from Croatia, Germany and Sweden, and a helicopter, 58 firefighters and nine water tanks from the Czech Republic heading to Greece on Tuesday. Two aircraft from Cyprus arrived on Monday as did 56 Romanian firefighters. A blaze on the island of Evia was being tackled with the assistance of French firefighters. "We are mobilizing actually almost one third of the aircraft we have in the rescEU fleet", EU spokesman Balazs Ujvari recounted.

Flames burn a forest during a wildfire on Parnitha mountain near Hasia suburb, northwestern Athens, 22 August 2023.   AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis