Two dead, hundreds evacuated from fires on island near Athens

ATHENS – Two people died and hundreds were evacuated on Aug 16 as two fires broke out on the Greek island of Salamis near Athens, the fire department said.

A fire department spokesman told AFP that “two bodies were recovered” from the Peristeria beach area in the south of the island, as the service announced that hundreds of people had hurriedly been evacuated an hour earlier.

“There are hundreds of bathers and permanent residents, an evacuation order has been issued,” the agency’s deputy spokesman Yiannis Artopios told state TV ERT.

The civil protection ministry issued four evacuation orders in short succession as the fires broke out “almost simultaneously” in Peristeria and Selinia, two popular bathing areas in the island’s south and east, Artopios said.

“It is a difficult fire... inside an inhabited area,” he said.

Some roads remained open and police forces were on hand to guide them to safety, Artopios said.

Nine people required medical care for burns, state agency ANA said.

Salamis, just west of Athens, has some 37,000 residents, many of them elderly, and the beaches were full of people on Aug 16, officials said.

Local officials were trying to keep the two fires from scaling a mountain and linking up, Salamina deputy mayor Thodoris Zannis told the station.

The fire was burning through pine forest and bush, officials said.

The fire service mobilised a large force of some 200 firefighters, nearly 50 engines, six aircraft and seven helicopters, rushing in reinforcements from the mainland, Artopios said.

Greece’s coast guard said it had dispatched five patrol boats to the area and several other private vessels including ferries were being made available.

“So far around 90 people have been evacuated by sea,” coast guard spokesman Theofanis Balatsoukas told ERT.

“(The operation) is proceeding smoothly,” he said.

The fire department also had two vessels assisting, Artopios said.

Skyros blaze contained

After largely escaping the heatwave temperatures that blanketed much of Europe earlier this summer, Greece has been hit with several major wildfires since late July, fuelled by unusually strong winds.

Firefighters had largely contained a blaze on the Aegean island of Skyros earlier, an AFP reporter said.

Thirty-four fires have broken out over the past 24 hours around the country, according to the fire department.

Five firefighters have died so far, including a Danish pilot killed in a mid-air collision between two Bell helicopters while battling a blaze near Athens earlier in August.

Winds were expected to ease later on Aug 16. According to the civil protection ministry, on Aug 10 for the first time in 10 days, no area was above 3 on the national fire risk scale, which runs to 5, its highest level.

Greece is hit by wildfires every year.

Experts say the risk is growing because of human-fuelled climate change, which has made droughts and other extreme weather event more severe. AFP