Several regions of Greece continued to flare up on Friday after a week of heatwave which turned this country into a "powder keg", while Turkey was facing an equally critical situation.
Thick billows of smoke still escaped Friday evening from a major outbreak which had broken out on Tuesday north of Athens and resumed with virulence Thursday at the foot of Mount Parnes.
"We are suffocating again because there is a violent resumption of the fire," said Spyros Vrettos, the mayor of Acharnes, a town 30 km from the Greek capital, on Friday evening.
"We are very worried," he told Skai TV, as the fire spread to the northeast.
The village of Afidnes was engulfed in flames all night long, leaving a spectacle of desolation, charred cars, destroyed houses, blackened trees, AFP journalists noted.
Nearby, in Krioneri, houses, businesses and factories were burnt down.
"The fire is out of control. I don't want to leave, my whole life is here," says Vassiliki Papapanagiotis.
Part of the highway connecting the north to the south of Greece was cut off there as a precaution while 2,000 migrants were evacuated from the camp near Ritsona.
On Friday evening, the Amygdaleza detention center was also emptied of occupants.
At least 450 Greek firefighters were trying to come to the end of the fire, aided by air and ground resources, and French, Swedish, Romanian, Swiss, Israeli and Cypriot colleagues.
"Critical situation"
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis described the situation as "extremely critical" in the face of dozens of fires that have ravaged Greece since July 27 under the effect of scorching temperatures.
"We are facing unprecedented conditions, several days of heatwave turned the whole country into a powder keg," he added Thursday evening in a televised address.
A preliminary UN report to which AFP had access qualifies the Mediterranean area as a "hot spot of climate change" which will experience significant heat waves and drought as well as fires fueled by rising temperatures.
With a mercury oscillating between 40 and 45 degrees, Greece and Turkey are experiencing an exceptional heatwave, the "worst" for the Greeks in three decades, according to Mr. Mitsotakis.
In these two neighboring countries, forests have been blazing for ten days, the fire devastating homes and businesses and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of residents of the affected regions and tourists.
On the Turkish side of the Aegean Sea, 208 fires have been counted since the end of July, of which 12 were still active on Friday, 196 having been brought under control, according to the Turkish presidency.
On the Greek side, the Deputy Minister of Civil Protection, Nikos Hardalias estimated Friday evening that 64 of the 154 fires counted during the day continued to rage.
Eight people died and dozens were hospitalized in southern Turkey.
In Greece, an inhabitant of northern Athens was killed by a fall from an electricity pole and an industrialist died of cardiac arrest at his Krioneri factory while everything was burning around.
18 people were injured, including two volunteer firefighters in critical condition.
"A very sad moment"
"It's a very sad moment," Konstantinos Konstantinidis, a resident of Kourkouloi, one of the 20 villages evacuated from the Greek island of Euboea, 200 km east of the capital, told AFP Greek.
In the south of the Peloponnese, more than 5,000 residents of the town of Gytheio and tourists have also been asked to leave their homes and head to a nearby city, according to the public television channel ERT.
"The fire is approaching the city, the situation is still very difficult," Theodoros Veroutis, the deputy prefect of the region, told ANA.
In Turkey, in the port of Oren, Hulusi Kinic on Thursday refused to follow the hundreds of villagers evacuated by sea from the vicinity of the Milas thermal power station, in the southwest.
“Where do you want us to go at our age?” Asks the 79-year-old retiree.
The fire that had dangerously approached this power station, whose enclosure houses thousands of tons of coal, has been extinguished, the municipality of Mugla announced.
The fight continued Friday in five provinces of Turkey, including the tourist regions of Antalya and Mugla, where other evacuations took place, according to the NTV television channel.
In Athens, SMS alerts warned travelers and Greeks of the "extreme danger of fires in the coming days".
The authorities prohibit "access to forests" and advise "to avoid all displacement" because of air pollution in the capital.
The Athens Observatory warned that the air quality there was "bad".
With their faces covered to protect themselves from harmful particles, a few tourists braved the stifling atmosphere to climb the Acropolis, before it closed at noon due to a heatwave.
With AFP
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