Fires raging in Greece and Europe

25 July 2022 At least four large fires are cutting a path of destruction across Greece on Saturday, burning homes and businesses, forcing evacuations, pushing into beach resorts and scorching protected forests and parks. Strong winds and temperatures approaching 40 degrees Celsius are fanning the flames in Evros in the east and on the island of Lesvos in the north Aegean Sea. In Grevena in northern Greece, a fire ignited in a remote mountainous area; while land and air firefighting teams are battling a wildfire in Messinia, in the southwest Peloponnese. The wildfires come four years to the day that devastating blazes in the seaside Athens resort of Mati left 102 people dead and some 250 injured, while roughly 2,500 homes were burned or damaged. Almost half of the houses are now habitable again, save for the eerie memories that linger there. The fire at Mati is the second- deadliest wildfire of the century after the 2009 bushfires in Australia which killed 173 people. It is also counted as the sixth- deadliest in the last 100 years. Meteorologists and climatologists say the increasing number of wildfires in the country cannot be ignored. While experts generally avoid linking single weather events like wildfires to larger climate change patterns, it appears there has been a shift in tone among some. “This is why we now talk of a climate crisis,” physicist- meteorologist Thodoris Giannaros, a researcher at the National Observatory of Athens Climate, told AMNA. “Change is not something that is going to happen sometime in the future,” he said. “It is already happening. It is happening now.” The temperature in Europe especially will continue to increase at a rate that exceeds the global average, he added, while the number of very hot days have doubled or even tripled in Greece.

Greek Tribune Adelaide, South Australia