Hundreds of firefighters in Greece were battling a major wildfire on Monday that broke out near Athens a day earlier and has raced through parched forest, destroying properties and prompting evacuation orders, according to the authorities.
The fire started on Sunday afternoon in Varnavas, a town less than 30 miles north of Athens by road, and spread rapidly within minutes because of high winds, Greece’s national fire service said. In some places, the flames were more than 80 feet tall. A spokesman for the fire service, Vassilios Vathrakogiannis, said that despite “superhuman efforts” to contain the fire overnight, it had spread “like lightning.”
The “extremely dangerous” fire was still burning Monday on two major fronts, according to Greece’s civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias: in Grammatiko, northeast of the capital, Athens, and Kallitechnoupoli, to the east of Athens. He added that strong winds and a protracted drought had created “dramatic conditions” for the more than 600 firefighters working to douse the flames.
The blaze is one of the worst to threaten the capital this year in what has been a busy fire season for the country, in part because of a dry winter and an exceptionally hot summer. Last month, large fires on the island of Evia damaged more than 2,400 acres of land and a major wildfire on the island of Kos prompted the evacuation of 10,000 people.
Greece’s civil protection authority placed several areas, including Athens, at “extreme fire risk” — the highest level of risk in the country’s five-tier system — for Monday.
Firefighters on Monday were also dispatched to smaller blazes north and east of Athens. Television footage showed residents of one home in the area of Marathon using branches to beat back flames in their yard before firefighting aircraft made successive water drops to extinguish the blaze.
The authorities have ordered at least a dozen communities to evacuate, and television footage on Sunday showed motorists fleeing as flames lined the road near Varnavas. A children’s hospital, a military hospital and two monasteries were also evacuated. Greece’s Olympic sports complex, north of Athens, was opened overnight to house residents who had to abandon their homes.
There were no reports of casualties, though at least one firefighter experienced burns and several people were given first aid for breathing problems, a spokesman for the fire service said. The extent of the damage to forestland and homes remained unclear as of midday on Monday
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