Unprecedented Heat Sparks More Wildfires Across Greece

The two weeks of heat­waves that boiled Greece in mid-July were fol­lowed by dozens of wild­fires break­ing out across the coun­try, burn­ing for­est and agri­cul­tural land and claim­ing human lives.

In many parts of the coun­try, tem­per­a­tures rose above 40 ºC for sev­eral days in a row, dry­ing out the land and cre­at­ing the per­fect con­di­tions for wild­fires to erupt.

“It was an unprece­dented heat­wave that lasted 15 days, which had never been recorded before in the coun­try,” said mete­o­rol­o­gist Yiorgos Papavasiliou. ​“After the first wave of high tem­per­a­tures, we observed the rapid increase in flam­ma­bil­ity already in the first few days. The strik­ing thing was that it affected almost the whole Mediterranean.”

According to ini­tial esti­mates, more than 50,000 hectares of for­est and crops, includ­ing 4,500 hectares of olive trees, were con­sumed by the wild­fires in the coun­try in July.

Western Attica, the region of Magnesia in cen­tral Greece, south­ern Evia, Rhodes in the Aegean Sea and Corfu in the Ionian Sea have all felt the fury of the cat­a­strophic fires.

Firefighters from sev­eral European Union coun­tries and Turkey arrived in Greece to assist their Greek coun­ter­parts in con­tain­ing the wild­fires.

Two deaths were reported in Magnesia, while a vol­un­teer fire­fighter in Rhodes suc­cumbed to res­pi­ra­tory prob­lems after strug­gling with the flames at the front.

On the small Aegean island of Karystos, a fire­fight­ing air­craft crashed into the hills while attempt­ing to drop water on the blaze burn­ing on the island from a low alti­tude. Both pilots were reported dead in the crash.

Rhodes, the largest island of the Dodecanese com­plex and a well-known tourist des­ti­na­tion, was among the Greek regions hit hard­est by the fires.

Burning for over 10 days, the flames destroyed houses in Asklipio and Gennadi vil­lages and charred large swathes of agri­cul­tural land, mainly in the cen­tral and east­ern parts of the island.

“We are at war with fire,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in an address to the Greek par­lia­ment. ​“We have expe­ri­enced the dev­as­ta­tion in many areas and, unfor­tu­nately, most recently in Rhodes. The island has been hurt.”

According to the first offi­cial record­ing of the dam­age, the blaze on Rhodes con­sumed 50,000 olive trees, along with 2,500 domes­tic ani­mals and bee hives.

Europe’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) pub­lished video footage depict­ing the burn scar of the wild­fire on Rhodes as seen from space.

Around 20,000 locals and tourists were evac­u­ated from impacted set­tle­ments like Kiotari and Asklipio and sev­eral tourist resorts in what was described as the largest evac­u­a­tion oper­a­tion the coun­try has ever seen.

In the moun­tain­ous vil­lage of Apollona in the cen­ter of the island, mill owner Yiorgos Tsakalios is count­ing the wounds inflicted on the area’s olive groves by the wild­fires.

“Every day, I ven­ture into the groves around the vil­lage to assess the dam­age to the olive trees,” Tsakalios told Olive Oil Times.

“We almost com­pletely rely on our olive trees for a liv­ing since there are no other crops here, and this part of Rhodes is not touristy,” he added. ​“Unfortunately, the fire has dealt a major blow to the area’s local econ­omy. Based on rough esti­mates, around 15,000 olive trees suc­cumbed to the flames in our area alone.”

Meanwhile, the gov­ern­ment announced that the country’s olive farm­ers impacted by the wild­fires are enti­tled to finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion of €160 per dam­aged olive tree.

Tsakalios, nev­er­the­less, argued that reha­bil­i­ta­tion mea­sures for the island’s olive groves would prove more con­struc­tive than any finan­cial back­ing.

“The sup­port the gov­ern­ment promised is point­less,” he said. ​“Just giv­ing money can­not bring back our trees, some of which were cen­turies old. The state must come up with a com­pre­hen­sive plan to restore our burned olive groves.”

“What is more, deer roam Rhodes in large num­bers, and any young olive trees planted would have no chance of sur­viv­ing,” Tsakalios added. ​“Wild plants and grass are not there after the fires, and the deer live on any­thing they can find now. There must be a hedge of some kind to keep them away.”

In the west­ern Peloponnese, fires broke out in four dif­fer­ent loca­tions in the munic­i­pal­i­ties of Pyrgos and Ancient Olympia. Several set­tle­ments were evac­u­ated as the flames con­sumed large swathes of coun­try­side and crops and came dan­ger­ously close to the Olympia archae­o­log­i­cal site.

The author­i­ties acti­vated the auto­mated fire extin­guish­ing sys­tem installed at the site in case the flames went out of con­trol.

The archae­o­log­i­cal site of Olympia, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was pre­vi­ously threat­ened by the wild­fire of August 2021, which engulfed more than 5,000 hectares of olive trees in the area.

According to Yiorgos Georgopoulos, the mayor of the con­tem­po­rary town of Ancient Olympia, the water-bomb­ing air­craft already oper­at­ing in two other fires nearby were the rea­son the Olympia archae­o­log­i­cal site and the con­tem­po­rary town remained intact.

“Hadn’t it been for the fires in Karoutes and Paliovarvasena, which had planes already in the air, the flames would have reached our set­tle­ment and the archae­o­log­i­cal site,” the mayor said. ​“This is what saved us.”

Local award-win­ning pro­ducer Alexis Karabelas of AMG Karabelas, based near the archae­o­log­i­cal site of Olympia, said that the company’s estab­lish­ments nar­rowly escaped the fire.

“The flames approached us to as close as 2 kilo­me­ters, but luck­ily the fire­fight­ers were able to con­tain them,” Karabelas told Olive Oil Times. ​“It was a dread­ful expe­ri­ence.”

Other pro­duc­ers in the area out­lined wild­fires’ neg­a­tive, long-last­ing impact on the country’s olive oil indus­try.

“We man­aged to steer clear of the July fire, but the fire of 2021 has almost put us out of busi­ness,” local pro­ducer and mill owner Giannis Gouvas told Olive Oil Times. ​“The blaze con­sumed part of my mill and many olive groves in the area, includ­ing mine. I lost not only my olive trees but also my cus­tomers who were left with no olives to har­vest and mill.”

“The state pro­vided some finan­cial help, but it can­not com­pen­sate us for the losses we have suf­fered,” he added. ​“Any young olive trees planted would take years to grow.”

• Athens Voice
• Newsit
• Pelop