LAST UPDATE | 22 Aug 2023

THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE in an outer district of Greece’s capital Athens were under evacuation orders Tuesday as firefighters battled a steadily growing wave of wildfires around the country that has left 20 dead.

Civil protection ordered the evacuation of Ano Liosia in northwest Athens, a district of over 25,000 people while at the neighbouring community of Fyli an AFP journalist saw homes on fire.

“The situation is unprecedented, weather conditions are extreme,” fire department spokesman Yiannis Artopios told state TV ERT, adding that the Tuesday fires “grew to gigantic size” in a short space of time.

The fire is burning the lower slopes of the Mount Parnitha, the largest forest bordering Athens, which has been burned several times.

Another big blaze was still raging at a landfill in the industrial zone of Aspropyrgos, west of Athens, covering the area in a noxious black cloud.

Earlier today the bodies of 18 people while scouring the area of a major wildfire in Greece.

Authorities were examining whether the group might have been migrants who entered the country through the nearby border with Turkey.

The discovery in the Avanta area of the city of Alexandroupolis came as hundreds of firefighters battled dozens of wildfires breaking out across the country, fanned by gale-force winds.

Two people died and two firefighters were injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece yesterday.

With their hot, dry summers, southern European countries are particularly prone to wildfires.

Another major blaze was burning across Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands for a week, although no injuries or damage to homes was reported.

European Union officials have blamed climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires in Europe, noting that 2022 was the second-worst year for wildfire damage on record after 2017.

In Greece, police activated the country’s Disaster Victim Identification Team to identify the 18 bodies, which were found near a shack in the Avanta area, Ioannis Artopios, a spokesman for the fire department, said in a televised statement.

“Given that there have been no reports of a missing person or missing residents from the surrounding areas, the possibility is being investigated that these are people who had entered the country illegally,” Artopios said.

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Alexandroupolis lies near the country’s border with Turkey, along a route often taken by people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa and seeking to enter the European Union.

Avanta, like many nearby villages and settlements, had been under evacuation orders, with push alerts sent to mobile phones.

Overnight, a massive wall of flames raced through forests toward Alexandroupolis, prompting authorities to evacuate another eight villages and the city’s hospital.

Flames turned the sky over the city red as choking smoke and swirling flecks of ash filled the air.

About 65 of the more than 100 patients in the hospital were transported to a ferry boat docked in the city’s port, while others were taken to other hospitals in northern Greece.

The ferry later set sail with more than 20 of the patients for the port town of Kavala, where they were to be transferred to another hospital.

Deputy health minister Dimitris Vartzopoulos, speaking on Greece’s Skai television, said smoke and ash in the air around the Alexandrouplolis hospital were the main reasons behind the decision to evacuate the building.

“We evacuated within four hours,” he said.

Local residents watch the wildfire in Avanta AP Photo / Achilleas Chiras AP Photo / Achilleas Chiras / Achilleas Chiras

The coast guard said patrol boats and private vessels evacuated another 40 people by sea from beach areas west of Alexandroupolis and were ferrying them to the city’s port.

In the north-eastern Evros border region, a fire was burning through forest in a protected national park, with satellite imagery showing smoke from the blaze blanketing much of northern and western Greece.

New fires broke out in several parts of the country today, including in woodland north-west of Athens and an industrial area on the capital’s western fringes.

Small explosions resounded from the industrial area of Aspropyrgos as the flames reached warehouses and factories, while authorities shut down a highway and ordered the evacuation of nearby villages.

With firefighting forces stretched to the limit, Greece appealed for help from the European Union’s civil protection mechanism.

Five firefighting planes from Croatia, Germany and Sweden, and a helicopter, 58 firefighters and nine water tanks from the Czech Republic were heading to Greece on today, while 56 Romanian firefighters and two aircraft from Cyprus arrived yesterday.

French firefighters were also in Greece, helping tackle a blaze on the island of Evia yesterday.

A burnt car and warehouses are seen from above in the village of Palagia, near Alexandroupolis AP Photo / Achilleas Chiras AP Photo / Achilleas Chiras / Achilleas Chiras

The fire risk level for several regions, including the wider Athens area, was listed as “extreme” for a second day today.

Authorities have banned public access to mountains and forests in those regions until at least tomorrow morning and ordered military patrols.

Greece’s deadliest wildfire killed 104 people in 2018, at a seaside resort near Athens that residents had not been warned to evacuate.

Authorities have since erred on the side of caution, issuing swift mass evacuation orders whenever inhabited areas are under threat.

Last month, a wildfire on the island of Rhodes forced the evacuation of some 20,000 tourists.

Days later, two air force pilots were killed when their water-dropping plane crashed while diving low to tackle a blaze on Evia.