Firefighters Struggle in Athens
ATHENS Two years ago, ferocious fires tore through scores of villages and olive groves, killing at least 65 people and destroying 6 percent of Greece’s tree cover.
On Monday, the fourth day of a major operation that is struggling to contain brush fires burning the outskirts of Athens, Greeks were asking how their country could still appear so unprepared for a similar disaster.
“I’m grieving, I’m mad, I’m aching,” Eleni Vliatsi said as she looked through the charred remains of her home. “How can these things happen in this day and age? How can authorities allow such destruction to take place over and over again?”
Wind-driven flames destroyed Mrs. Vliatsi’s home, two cars and chicken coop over the weekend when a brush fire broke out in Grammatiko on Friday, about 30 miles northeast of her plot in Penteli.
The fire, feasting on vast sections of pine and olive groves, spread quickly, racing through 14 towns and villages before sweeping down the slopes of Mount Penteli, devouring Mrs. Vliatsi’s home and belongings.
“No one was here,” she said. “Just volunteers shouting ‘Get out.’ ”
As fire tornadoes swirled within the blaze, Mrs. Vliatsi, her neighbor and a crowd of Kurdish immigrants living in derelict huts scrambled to safety, gathering at the central square of Penteli.
An hour later, the first fire trucks appeared. But by then, Mrs. Vliatsi, a retired school janitor whose left arm is paralyzed, said authorities could do little.
“There was no coordination. There was no state. There was no municipal guard,” she said. “This all could have been averted had authorities acted fast in the first hours, in the first fire that broke out.”
Bitter complaints like these could be heard across the Athens region on Monday as authorities, blaming extreme weather conditions, scrambled to exploit brief lulls in high winds to beat back fires that had threatened the capital for three days.
Though most of the blazes seemed to be retreating from the fringes of Athens, officials warned that fires were still raging on four major fronts, even as rescue crews and water-bearing planes came to the aid of Greek forces from other European nations, including Italy, France and Cyprus.
“The worst seems to be over,” said Ioanni Kappakis, spokesman for the National Fire Brigade of Greece. “The situation, though, is still unpredictable because of the strong winds.”
Dozens of nuns wearing surgical masks were evacuated from a monastery near Nea Makri, northeast of Athens. The nuns were rescued after a sudden flare-up of brush fires on surrounding hills.
And near historic Marathon, authorities scrambled to save two archaeological sites with 2,500-year-old ruins for a second time in 24 hours.
“I begged and begged authorities overnight to send over planes and a helicopter,” said Spyros Zagaris, the mayor of Marathon. His pleas fell on deaf ears, he said, but on Monday ground troops moved in to keep the town’s antiquities from being destroyed.
By nightfall, all major fires around Athens had been checked and the authorities were on standby for flare-ups. The most ominous fire raged on Mount Kithaironos, where local authorities ordered the evacuation of the nearby coastal resort of Porto Geremanos, according to a fire brigade official. Other fires were burning on several Aegean islands, including Zakynthos, in western Greece; Skyros; and Evia.
More than 90 fires have been reported since Saturday, razing more than 30,000 acres of farm fields, forest and olive groves, and forcing thousands to flee.
“I had to scream to get the attention of some firefighters who passed by to save my home,” said Evliana Vassiro, a resident of Penteli. “Even when they came, I had to help them.”
The government has rebutted the mounting criticism that it failed to act quickly on the fires.
“Our first priority has been to save lives,” said Christos Markoyannakis, the deputy interior minister.
People living in areas threatened by the fires and the country’s left-leaning news media were not sympathetic.
“A Crime With No Excuses,” read a front-page headline of the Athens daily Ethnos, echoing allegations made by Pasok, the opposition Socialist party, that the government had done nothing to improve fire protection since 2007.
The center-right government has been weakened by corruption scandals, and Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, who holds power with a one-seat margin in Parliament, already faced heavy criticism for his government’s handling of the deadly fires two summers ago.
“The resources are there,” said Theodore Tsamis, a civil protection agency worker who came to help in Athens’s fire battles from the Peloponnese. After the 2007 fires, he said, firefighting agencies have replenished their equipment, financing and staffing. “It’s the coordination that is ailing,” he said.