Last Wednesday, three Greek firefighters lost their lives while battling wildfires in Crete and the Peloponnese, a southern Greek peninsula.
The fire around Porto Germeno on the Gulf of Corinth, approximately 60 kilometers northwest of Athens, had diminished by Saturday. However, strong winds up to 130 kilometers per hour pushed the flames over a mountain to the south, reaching Veniza, closer to the capital. Initial assessments suggest around 200 homes were destroyed.
By Sunday, flames had rapidly spread across western Attica, a region including Athens, putting communities and an industrial area near Megara, roughly 30 kilometers from Athens, at risk. On state TV Ert, Nikos Lavranos, president of the firefighters’ federation, described it as a “huge front” and a “black blanket covering an area of around 25 acres.”
Multiple evacuations occurred, with firefighters concentrating on preventing the fire from reaching Megara, a town of 30,000. By late Sunday afternoon, over 2,500 individuals had been evacuated from western Attica, as reported by Greece’s firefighting service.
“Unfortunately, we have uncontrolled fires in far too many areas. As soon as the fire brigade arrives at one spot, just as the fire is being brought under control, it flares up again in another spot,” remarked Megara Mayor Panagiotis Margetis to Open TV.
Firefighters were simultaneously tackling another blaze in the Peloponnese and on the island of Cephalonia in the Ionian Sea, located between Greece and Italy. Over 500 firefighters were deployed across Greece.













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