Hundreds of people were evacuated early yesterday as firefighters deployed planes and helicopters to fight a surging wildfire in mountainside suburbs north of Athens for a second day.
Nearly 500 firefighters, 120 vehicles, three planes and four helicopters swung into action from dawn to battle the flames from spreading to the suburbs of Penteli, Pallini, Anthousa and Gerakas, home to about 29,000 people.
No injuries were immediately reported, but at least 10 homes are believed to have sustained varying degrees of damage, state TV ERT said.
Photo: AP
“The sky was red ...we left without taking anything with us,” a Pallini resident who lost his car and shed to the flames told ERT.
The house next door was completely gutted.
“The civil protection authority was late in alerting us. The fire was scorching our backs, we left in the nick of time. Had we stayed another 30 seconds it would have burned us,” he said.
Greek media reported that an 80-year-old man in Anthousa had shot and killed himself in despair over the fire, which broke out on Tuesday afternoon.
Greece has so far been spared the scorching temperatures that have contributed to deadly wildfires in France, Portugal and Spain, destroying vast tracts of land, but has faced gale-force winds this week.
The wildfires on the foot of Mount Penteli north of Athens were fanned overnight by strong winds that constantly changed direction.
“There are two active fronts ... the winds are so strong that the planes are prevented from making targeted water drops,” senior civil protection official Vassilis Kokkalis told Athens 98.4 radio.
He added that the fire was threatening businesses on a major Athens highway.
“It’s a fire that will be a cause for concern for several days because of rekindlings,” Kokkalis said.
Residents in several areas, a pediatric hospital and the national observatory at Athens were evacuated as a precautionary measure.
The police said that about 600 people had been moved to safety overnight.
“It was insane, we did not know where to flee,” an elderly Anthousa resident told ERT.
“Embers were falling from the sky, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
Traffic was suspended on parts of a ring road around Athens, the company that manages it wrote on Twitter.
Greece has set up a crisis cell and firefighters battled 117 wildfires in the country in the past 24 hours.
Another 87 firefighters were battling a blaze in the Peloponnese, a southern peninsula.
Athens has asked European countries to send firefighters to help.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS