Greece "State of Emergency" over wildfires. 46 dead and climbing.

Helena Smith in Athens
Sunday August 26, 2007
The Observer


The charred remains of a mother holding her child in her arms; people burned alive in cars as they tried to flee; panic-stricken villagers trapped in flame-encircled homes; and thousands evacuated to beaches - these were among the scenes being witnessed in Greece as some of the worst wildfires in living memory ravaged the country.

With 46 dead yesterday afternoon and the toll expected to climb, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis declared a state of emergency, saying the forest fires 'can't be a coincidence'. He vowed that the arsonists would be found. Within hours police had arrested a suspect.

'All regions of the country are declared in a state of emergency in order to mobilise all means and forces to face this disaster,' he said in a televised address to the nation. 'We are living a national tragedy,' said Karamanlis.

He called an extraordinary cabinet meeting after visiting villages that had been reduced to cinders in the southern Peloponnese. With at least two tourists among the dead - and hundreds more holiday-makers threatened - Karamanlis urged Greece's EU partners to despatch more water-dropping planes and helicopters, saying it was a crisis Greece could not handle alone.

It was, he said, a day of 'national mourning' that would not be forgotten soon. All state buildings, including parliament, were ordered to fly flags at half-mast.

'These are very difficult times for all of us,' said Karamanlis, whose government has faced criticism for its handling of an unrivalled spate of forest fires that has wrought destruction across Greece this summer.

'I wish to express my deep grief over the lost lives. We are fighting against heavy odds, on many fronts and under particularly tough conditions.'

With new fires erupting almost hourly and authorities battling some 170 blazes from the Ionian Sea in the west, Ioannina in the north and the Peloponnese in the south, firefighting services have been stretched to the limit - despite the military being mobilised by the government. Gale-force winds known as the meltemi, which sweep across Greece in August, were also hampering efforts to extinguish the flames.

By late afternoon yesterday, as fires erupted on the fringes of Athens, threatening buildings, forcing the evacuation of monks from a monastery and closing the national highway, a wall of flames stretched across the Peloponnese with witnesses describing harrowing scenes.

Officials said the devastation was on a scale not seen in peacetime. Entire villages looked as though they had been vaporised, people and livestock incinerated. People who had tried to escape fires engulfing homesteads were found dead in their burnt-out cars. In one village near the Peloponnesian town of Zaharo, police discovered the bodies of a mother and her four children.

'There's absolute pandemonium here. It's like a war zone. In a single night everything we know has been destroyed,' Nikos Kakovessis, a resident of the town, said. 'People have lost their homes, their cattle, everything they own. May God cast his hand to stop this evil. May the worst be over.'

Frightened locals, authorities said, had been joined on the beaches of the peninsula by tourists forced to flee hotels and resorts at the peak of the holiday season. Many had fled the flames with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. With thousands expected to spend last night outside, nearby tavernas were providing tablecloths for evacuees to sleep on.

Officials yesterday said they feared arsonists were behind the wildfires. 'This is unprecedented. At least 21 of the fires that we are fighting erupted after 9pm Friday, which points to the crime of arson,' said Yannis Stamoulis, a spokesman for the firefighting service.

The high casualty toll, by far the worst in a 24-hour period since June, was blamed on people refusing to leave their homes, and in some cases bungled rescue efforts. 'People are not evacuating when we ask them to because they are afraid of losing their possessions, but they have to listen to us,' he said.

Greece has seen more than 300 fires in the past three months. The ecological disaster has dented the popularity of the ruling Conservatives, who have called early elections to take place on 16 September.