Water-bombing planes take to skies as Greece battles wildfires

KRYO PIGADI, Greece — Water-bombing aircraft resumed firefighting operations in Greece on Monday after winds eased, joining hundreds of firefighters battling multiple blazes that have already claimed five lives, the fire department told AFP.

“Today we are facing three difficult fronts: Psatha, Kryo Pigadi and Kandyli,” a department spokesperson told AFP, referring to areas located between 45 and 70 kilometers (30-45 miles) west of Athens.

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Lighter winds allowed aerial firefighting operations to resume early on Monday, with nine water-bombing aircraft joining nine helicopters and about 450 firefighters battling the flames in the regions of Boeotia and Attica, according to the fire service.

READ: Helicopter crew killed in Greece fires

In recent days, wind gusts reaching 80 kilometers per hour had grounded aircraft for safety reasons, hampering firefighting efforts.

Authorities ordered new evacuations on Monday morning in villages near Kandyli, about 45 kilometres west of the capital, Greece’s Civil Protection agency said.

“The battle against the fires is uneven,” Deputy Minister for Civil Protection and Climate Crisis Kostas Katsafados told public broadcaster ERTNews on Monday.

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The wildfires have claimed five lives since last week.

On Sunday, two Bell helicopters collided while conducting firefighting operations near Psatha. A Danish pilot and a Greek co-pilot aboard one of the aircraft were killed.

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Their deaths followed those of three firefighters who died last week while battling separate wildfires in Crete and the Peloponnese.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned that Greece faced “extremely difficult” days ahead as high temperatures and dry conditions continued to fuel the blazes.

READ: On the front line of Europe’s battle against wildfires

More than 12,000 hectares of forests and agricultural land have burned over the past week, according to analyses from the European Union’s Copernicus Earth observation program cited by local media.

Greece, like much of the Mediterranean region, has experienced increasingly frequent and intense wildfires that scientists link to climate change.

Police arrested two employees of an electricity utility company in connection with one of the fires, which investigators believe may have been sparked on Friday by an electrical cable near the coastal village of Porto Germeno on the Gulf of Corinth, about 60 kilometers west of Athens.

At the height of the tourist season, authorities warned that the wildfire risk would remain “very high” on Monday.

Civil Protection placed Attica, which surrounds the capital, and neighboring Boeotia at level four on a five-point fire danger scale. /dl