Greece wildfires brought under control, says fire service | BBC News

Greece wildfires brought under control, says fire service | BBC News

next to Greece and you well may well have seen the images of those wildfires that have been threatening the capital Athens well the good news is authorities say they’ve been brought under control at least one person died dozens injured thousands of others had to leave their homes Greek media reporting more than 100 buildings have been damaged around the capital officials uh also said that less than 10% of the burnt areas were forests let’s speak to our correspondent a mhiri who’s in a suburb of Athens hi a just talk us through where you are first of all well Lewis today is all about assessing the damage and obviously you can see some of that around me now this is a suburb of Athens because this year the wild have come to the capital and if you look behind me you’ll notice that there’s a coll collapsed basketball hoop this was a basketball court before the fires came here and over here are stands where of children would come to watch their friends play now a staff member told me about 500 children used to come here every day and if you look at the pictures the photos of what this used to look like beforehand you can see the scale of the damage I can see the sky above me I shouldn’t be able to do that but the rooftop was the very first thing that caught fire now I’ve also seen helicopters fly over dowsing the land with water because there is this concern that there could still be flareups but what the government is particularly focused on is how to help communities like this these people uh who’ve lost businesses like this rebuild and so 4.7 million euros has been allocated to that effort we know that nearly 650 people were offered temporary housing since Sunday people who were at risk and who were affected by these fires and yet of course no matter how much help they receive it’ll be a long time before businesses like this can get up and running again and a a just talk us through the background here because this is a part of the world that is used to very hot conditions at certain times of years is what has been the trends what has been happening over the years wildfires are not uncommon to Greece I was here last year when they hit the islands as well when roads in particular uh sent hundreds of tourists fleeing from their hotel rooms and as the fires approached uh all their accommodation and of course uh 6 years ago there was uh a devastating uh summer where more than a hundred people were killed in uh the seaside town of mati where the fires consumed homes cars people were even killed as they were trying to swim away to safety and so yes none of this is uncommon to Greece but the temperatures have been rising it’s been in the hottest uh July June and July on record and what scientists say is that these sorts of conditions uh the dry heat the winds uh these are what are contributing to these wildfires and that global warming climate change could be contributing to the severity and the frequency of these fires and if you speak to people in Greece residents themselves they say these temperatures the way that they have to live their Summers they say it’s not normal how’s a day thank you so much for that

There are no longer any active wildfires in the wider Athens area, Greece’s chief fire brigade spokesman has said.

Milder winds and extensive efforts by the emergency services helped bring the fires under control.

But officials will stay alert as there is still a risk of flare ups, as temperatures could soar above 30C (86F) during the day.

One woman died and dozens more people – including firefighters – were injured after the fires tore through 100,000 acres (40,470 hectares) of land.

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