The wildfire season in Greece has not ended with the passing of summer, as the month of September and into the first days of October witnessed blazes across the country.
From Rhodes to Marathon to Corinth, thousands of acres of land went up in flames and burned for days. Hundreds of firefighters were deployed to battle the fires, and on Oct. 1 the EU dispatched extra water-dropping aircraft to Greece.
“We need to understand that the fire season, which is actually from May to the end of October, now has dangerous conditions both at the beginning and at the end,” Kostas Lagouvardos, Research Director and Meteorologist at the National Observatory of Athens told To Vima English Edition. “Due to climate change, because the droughts become more intense and temperatures are high from early and hold until late, we will now see fires not just in July but in May and also later in the autumn.”
Lagouvardos said the massive wildfire in Corinth prefecture, erupting in the hills and mountains overlooking the the coastal resort of Xylokastro from the south, was influenced by a host of aggravating factors– high winds, air currents and arid ground conditions.
But a summer of record-breaking heat and frequent and lengthy heat waves has brought an extended threat for fire across the country. On Oct. 4, much of Attica prefecture and parts of the Peloponnese were still labeled as being at high risk of wildfires by the Civil Protection Ministry.
“If you asked us, ‘did we expect to have such big difficulties at the end of September, into early October,’” said Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, Vassilis Kikilias, in a press conference on the first of October. “We would tell you that ‘no, obviously we did not expect that in this time period at the end of September, early October we would have so many new fires and difficult fires.’”
He noted that this summer, which according to Meteo.gr, was the hottest ever on record for Greece, the fire service had to battle over 4,500 different blazes across the country.
