Firefighters in Greece struggle to save coastal resort as winds rage

The fire department said over 300 firefighters were operating in the area of Porto Germeno, some 70 kilometres (45 miles) northwest of Athens in the region of Viotia. “The fire has reached the sea… homes have certainly been damaged,” a fire department spokesman told AFP. “The winds are very strong.

Aircraft are trying to operate as best they can, but some are unable to and have been transferred to another fire (in the Peloponnese) where conditions are milder,” he added. The fire broke out Friday near the neighbouring coastal village of Agios Vasileios. Residents initially ignored a civil protection call to evacuate, and some 300 people had to be rescued by sea.

Theodore Giannaros, a wildfire meteorologist and senior researcher at the National Observatory of Athens on Saturday said the damage to the Porto Germeno area was “inconceivable”. “The area that has been affected appears to exceed 4–5,000 hectares,” he said in a Facebook post. On Friday, another fire threatened the suburb of Haidari west of Athens that had to be partly evacuated. A maximum fire risk alert has been issued for Saturday in the greater Athens area, parts of the Peloponnese and Crete, central Greece and the border region with Turkey.