Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitstotakis spoke to parliament on Wednesday, reporting that this year’s fire season was the most difficult in decades.
“The first fact is that this year was the most difficult year in the last 40 years,” said the Prime Minister in his briefing before the plenary. “We had consistently higher than average temperatures, extremely long droughts, strong winds after a period of drought, and little snow in the mountains. […] However, these are the conditions that, in all probability, as a result of the climate crisis, we will be called upon to deal with with increasing frequency from now on.”
The Prime Minister stated that parts of Greece reached a risk level of 4 and 5, as defined by the Civil Protection Ministry, earlier in the season than in previous years and that there were massive fires even into September.
Greece’s fire season stretches from May into October, and this year there were serious fires both at the beginning and the end of the season.
The prime minister reported that Greece had 9,101 fires this year compared to 7163 last year. In total, he said that 1,754,000 acres burned last year and 440,000 acres burned this year.
Mitsotakis argued that it is impossible to completely eliminate the risk of fires breaking out, but rather the aim should be to have below the average number of fires, and fewer acreage burned in each fire: “The measure of comparison, obviously, cannot be that we will have no fires at all. I don’t imagine there is anyone who accepts that a summer can pass without any fires in the country.” The Prime Minister stated the average number of acres burned was around 500,000 acres per year in recent years.
The Prime Minister listed the various fire prevention methods his government had taken–launching a massive forest cleaning program, employing the use of fire-monitoring drones, and also lauded the tightening of penalties for arson. He praised the functioning of the 112 Emergency Number which both sends out urgent evacuation notifications and operates as a hotline, and rebuffed criticism of it. He also noted that his government had transferred the supervision of the forestry services from the Ministry of the Interior to the Ministry of the Environment, a move that had long been recommended by firefighting experts, which he identified as “important step towards better coordination”.
The prime minister additionally underlined the need for new firefighting aircraft and meteorological tools, and argued that it was necessary to impress on citizens the individual responsibility in cleaning up plots of land from debris and flammable refuse.
He also stated, over objections shouted from some MPs on the parliament floor, that restoration of burnt areas both financially and environmentally was well underway.
“Obviously, I will repeat once more that this problem is not only Greek, it is global.” stated Mitsotakis. “ It is, unfortunately, a reality that comes and accompanies the climate crisis we are facing. ”
