David McBrayer
August 29, 2023
A wildfire near Prodromos, 100 km northeast of Athens (Spyros Bakalis/AFP)
A forest blaze in Greece is "the largest wildfire ever recorded in the EU" and the bloc is mobilising nearly half its firefighting air wing to tackle it, a European Commission spokesman said Tuesday.
Firefighters have been battling the flames for 11 days in northeastern Greece which have killed at least 20 people and pose an "ecological disaster".
Eleven planes and one helicopter from the EU fleet have been sent to help Greece counter the fire, north of the city of Alexandroupoli, along with 407 firefighters, spokesman Balazs Ujvari said.
The EU's civil protection service said the fire has burnt over 810 square kilometres (310 square miles) -- an area bigger than New York City.
"This wildfire is the largest in the EU since 2000, when the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) began recording data," the service said.
Since it began on August 19, the bodies of 20 people have been found, 18 of them migrants including two children that were discovered in a region often used as an entry point from neighboring Turkey.
Greece's fire service told AFP that the blaze was "still out of control" in the northeast region's Dadia National Park, a major sanctuary for birds of prey.
A large fire previously hit the park in 2011, forest ranger Dora Skartsis said, lamenting that "everything that was regenerated since has been lost" in recent days.
"We're talking about a huge ecological disaster. The image is tragic," said Skartsis, who also heads a biodiversity protection group in the region.
The forest also plays a vital economic role in supporting logging, beekeeping and tourism activities in Evros, one of the poorest regions of the country.
In Alexandroupoli alone, at least 4,000 sheep and goats have been killed in the blaze and warehouses containing animal feed destroyed, according to Kostas Dounakis, who heads the local cattle breeders' association.
Deadly impact
The European Union currently calls on a fleet of 28 aircraft -- 24 water-dumping planes and four helicopters -- supplied by member countries to help battle blazes in the bloc and in nearby neighbors.
It is working on creating a standalone, EU-funded air wing of 12 aircraft that will be fully in place by 2030.
"We do know that fires are getting more severe," Ujvari noted.
"If you look at the figures every year in the past years, we are seeing trends which are not necessarily favorable, and that calls for, of course, more capacities at the member states' level."
Greece has been ravaged by numerous fires this summer which the government attributes to climate change.
The EU air deployment "underscores our commitment to swift and effective collective action in times of crisis," the EU's commissioner for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, said.
Environment Minister Theodoros Skylakakis also announced that work must begin on flood prevention to prevent landslides along the now barren terrain when rains return in the autumn.
Experts blame poor government preparation for Greek fires' devastation
Agence France-Presse
September 2, 2023
Greek Wild Fires ((Sakis MITROLIDIS/AFP)
While the Greek government has been quick to blame global warming for the summer's devastating wildfires, some experts argue that poor planning is at least as much to blame.
The European Commission has said that the blaze in the Dadia national park, which has been burning for two weeks now, is the largest on record in Europe.
That and other deadly fires across Greece were expected to consume more than 150,000 hectares (370,600 acres) of land, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament this week.
And the flames have so far claimed 26 lives.
"Is the climate crisis the alibi for everything?" said Mitsotakis. "No, it is not an alibi -- but it is part of the interpretation," he insisted.
Climate change is a theme the government has touched on repeatedly in the context of the wildfires but, as Mitsotakis appeared to at least implicitly acknowledge, it is not the whole story.
This year's fires are certainly stronger than those of previous years because of climate change, said Alexandros Dimitrakopoulos, head of Forest Protection and the Wildland Fire Science Lab at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
But that does not fully explain the extent of the damage, he told AFP, pointing out that 10 percent of the country's woodlands had gone up in smoke since 2007.
- 'Better planning needed' -
"Better planning in the fight against fires is needed, as well as better cooperation between the fire services and the specialists in geomorphology of wooded zones," Dimitrakopoulos argued -- geomorphology being the scientific study of the form or shape of the land.
Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory of Athens, made a similar point, arguing that the emphasis should be on adequate measures to prevent forest fires.
But the recurring problem, he said, was the dysfunctional relationship between the state and scientific bodies.
"The scientific tools exist and can help detect and prepare for difficult climatological conditions," he said -- such as the extreme drought that has struck the Evros region near the border with Turkey and other regions.
Opposition politicians took a similar line during a fierce parliamentary debate Thursday.
They accused the government of having been too slow to put preventative measures in place and of poor coordination between the various government agencies concerned.
- An international problem -
Mitsotakis, hitting back, referred to the growing climate crisis, the summer's extended heatwave in Greece and the hot dry winds that had fueled the fires.
And he pointed out that Greece was far from being the only country to suffer such massive wildfires, pointing to similar disasters this summer in Canada, Spain and the United States.
"Even those countries that have a greater financial capacity than Greece" were unable to cope with the fires, he argued.
He also announced he would be recruiting more firefighters and buying equipment such as drones to help monitor such disasters.
He had sharp words too for "certain scientists" who, he said, saw fit to publish their data on the wildfires in the news media -- such as the extent of the terrain burnt -- when the research that might have put the figures in context had not been completed.
But the National Observatory of Athens was having none of that, hitting back in a statement issued Friday.
"In a democracy and in the era of published data at the European and international level, science and the national research centres are obliged to inform society of the results of their activities and the natural conditions that affect the lives of citizens," it sa
Agence France-Presse
September 2, 2023
Greek Wild Fires ((Sakis MITROLIDIS/AFP)
While the Greek government has been quick to blame global warming for the summer's devastating wildfires, some experts argue that poor planning is at least as much to blame.
The European Commission has said that the blaze in the Dadia national park, which has been burning for two weeks now, is the largest on record in Europe.
That and other deadly fires across Greece were expected to consume more than 150,000 hectares (370,600 acres) of land, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament this week.
And the flames have so far claimed 26 lives.
"Is the climate crisis the alibi for everything?" said Mitsotakis. "No, it is not an alibi -- but it is part of the interpretation," he insisted.
Climate change is a theme the government has touched on repeatedly in the context of the wildfires but, as Mitsotakis appeared to at least implicitly acknowledge, it is not the whole story.
This year's fires are certainly stronger than those of previous years because of climate change, said Alexandros Dimitrakopoulos, head of Forest Protection and the Wildland Fire Science Lab at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
But that does not fully explain the extent of the damage, he told AFP, pointing out that 10 percent of the country's woodlands had gone up in smoke since 2007.
- 'Better planning needed' -
"Better planning in the fight against fires is needed, as well as better cooperation between the fire services and the specialists in geomorphology of wooded zones," Dimitrakopoulos argued -- geomorphology being the scientific study of the form or shape of the land.
Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory of Athens, made a similar point, arguing that the emphasis should be on adequate measures to prevent forest fires.
But the recurring problem, he said, was the dysfunctional relationship between the state and scientific bodies.
"The scientific tools exist and can help detect and prepare for difficult climatological conditions," he said -- such as the extreme drought that has struck the Evros region near the border with Turkey and other regions.
Opposition politicians took a similar line during a fierce parliamentary debate Thursday.
They accused the government of having been too slow to put preventative measures in place and of poor coordination between the various government agencies concerned.
- An international problem -
Mitsotakis, hitting back, referred to the growing climate crisis, the summer's extended heatwave in Greece and the hot dry winds that had fueled the fires.
And he pointed out that Greece was far from being the only country to suffer such massive wildfires, pointing to similar disasters this summer in Canada, Spain and the United States.
"Even those countries that have a greater financial capacity than Greece" were unable to cope with the fires, he argued.
He also announced he would be recruiting more firefighters and buying equipment such as drones to help monitor such disasters.
He had sharp words too for "certain scientists" who, he said, saw fit to publish their data on the wildfires in the news media -- such as the extent of the terrain burnt -- when the research that might have put the figures in context had not been completed.
But the National Observatory of Athens was having none of that, hitting back in a statement issued Friday.
"In a democracy and in the era of published data at the European and international level, science and the national research centres are obliged to inform society of the results of their activities and the natural conditions that affect the lives of citizens," it sa
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