100-ft excessive Greek wildfires transfer ‘like lightning’ and threaten Athens

Several 100-foot high wildfires are moving ‘like lightning’ through Greece, threatening Athens, while Portugal and Italy also suffer infernos as France and Germany are sweltering under a tropical ‘heat dome’.

Greece’s worst wildfires of the year have already killed one person and continued to burn on the outskirts of the capital Athens on Tuesday after the walls of flames as high as 100ft spread ‘like lightning’ due to gale-force winds, a fire brigade spokesperson said.

More than 500 firefighters backed by fire engines and waterbombing aircrafts have been battling the blaze that broke out near the village of Varnavas 20 miles north of Athens two days and torched homes, vehicles and swathes of bone-dry forest.

Meanwhile areas of Portugal and Italy have also suffered infernos, with fires currently burning in Italy’s Latina Province and in the north of Portugal.

Europe is sweltering under high temperatures, with the hotter weather and less rain providing ideal conditions for large-scale fires.

In France, Spain, Germany and Italy, a tropical ‘heat dome’ has brought record temperatures, with Germany expecting the hottest day of the year at 37 degrees Celsius, while traditionally cooler areas of Spain are seeing abnormally high temperatures of more than 40 degrees.

The blaze in Greece leapt from a wooded, hilly area into the suburbs on Monday, choking the city with smoke and ash and stirring panic in neighbourhoods that had not seen such a fire so close to the centre in decades.

It reached Vrilissia, around 8 miles from central Athens, a day ago, where one person was found dead, according to the fire brigade. The cause of the wildfire was not yet determined.

Winds were expected to pick up again later in the day on Tuesday and the country will remain on high fire alert until Thursday, with strong winds and temperatures forecast to reach up to 40 degrees Celsius.

‘The overall picture looks improved but there are still many fronts in various areas,’ said a fire brigade official.

Wildfires have been a common feature of Greek summers for years, but climate change has brought hotter weather and less rain, ideal conditions for large-scale fires.

The southern European country experienced its warmest winter on record this year and was on track for its hottest summer, with scant rain in many areas for months.

The worsening situation was mirrored across southern Europe, including in Spain and the Balkans.

The Greek fire left in its wake abandoned homes, burned cars and charred fields. Local newspaper Proto Thema said the damage spanned 39 square miles and included 100 homes.

Greece has activated the European Civil protection mechanism and is expecting assistance from France, Italy and the Czech Republic with aircraft and firefighters. Spain and Turkey have also offered help.

More than 30 areas were forced to evacuate, along with at least three hospitals, with power cuts in parts of the wider Athens region. Passenger ferries heading to the port of Rafina northeast of the capital were diverted.

Police have helped evacuate more than 250 people, and some residents spent the night in shelters.

Hundreds of wildfires have broken out across Greece since May. While summer fires are common in Greece, extraordinarily hot and dry weather linked to climate change have made the blazes more frequent and intense, according to scientists.

This year’s June and July were the hottest months ever recorded in Greece, which also recorded its warmest winter ever.

Both meteorologists and government officials have warned of the heightened danger of wildfires because of weather conditions from Sunday until Thursday.

Half of the country is under a ‘red alert’ for wildfire hazard, climate crisis and civil protection minister Vassilis Kikilias said, with weather experts warning of a ‘very difficult week’.

In Portugal, firefighters in northern regions like Vimioso, which is near the border with Spain, and Carregosa, south of Porto, have been battling wildfires since Sunday.

And in Italy, fires were burning near Terracina, Latina Province, with several residents evacuated to escape the flames. 

Meanwhile the heatwave in Europe is also pounding the traditionally cooler northern Spain, with regions sweltering in abnormally high temperatures of over 40 degrees on Sunday.

Temperatures soared over the weekend across Spain but especially in the traditionally cooler northern Cantabrian Sea area, triggering ‘extreme risk’ alerts in the regions of Cantabria and the Basque country, weather service AEMET said.

People wore hats and cooled themselves with fans in the Basque country’s Bilbao, one of the worst affected cities. ‘It’s too hot, you can’t just be in the streets, neither at the beach,’ Josefa Castillo told Reuters.

Patrick Heremans, a Belgian tourist, was shocked by the heat: ‘We’re unused to this kind of temperature, but we’re going to the museum today, where there’s air conditioning,’ he said.

Spain’s health ministry told people to drink water, protect themselves against the sun and pay particular attention to the young and the elderly.

In Italy, a red alert has been issued for extremely high temperatures for 13 Italian cities and the region of Lazior on August 11.

This comes as a new report revealed that more than 47,000 people died in Europe due to the scorching temperatures in 2023. The Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) published the report on Monday.

Last year was the world’s hottest on record. As climate change continues to increase temperatures, Europeans live in the world’s fastest-warming continent, facing growing health risks stemming from intense heat.

The 2023 death toll – below the more than 60,000 heat-related deaths estimated for the previous year – would have been 80 per cent higher without measures introduced in the past 20 years to help people adapt to rising temperatures, such as early warning systems and healthcare improvements, according to the report by the Spanish research centre.

‘Our results show how there have been societal adaptation processes to high temperatures during the present century, which have dramatically reduced the heat-related vulnerability and mortality burden of recent summers, especially among the elderly,’ said Elisa Gallo, researcher at ISGlobal and lead author of the study.

Researchers used death and temperature records from 35 European countries. They estimate that 47,690 died from causes related to high temperatures.

Adjusting the data for population, Greece, Bulgaria, Italy and Spain were the countries with the highest mortality rates related to heat.

Greece recorded its hottest July this year since 1960, according to preliminary meteorological data, and Italy, in the midst of one of its worst droughts in half a century, also went through scorching temperatures.

A thousand Croatian islands with their idyllic beaches in the Adriatic had daytime temperatures of almost 40 degrees Celsius – as did much of Spain and the south of France.