ALEXANDROUPOLIS, Greece (AP) — Firefighters scouring the area of a major wildfire in northeastern Greece burning out of control for a fourth day found the bodies of 18 people, authorities said Tuesday. They were examining whether the group could be made up of migrants who entered the country through the neighboring border.
The discovery in the Avanta area of the city of Alexandroupolis came as hundreds of firefighters battled dozens of wildfires erupting across the country, fanned by high winds. On Monday, two people died and two firefighters were injured in separate blazes in northern and central Greece.
With their hot and dry summers, southern European countries are particularly prone to forest fires. Another major fire burned in Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands for a week, although no injuries or damage to homes were reported from the blaze.
European Union officials accuse climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of forest fires in Europenoting that 2022 was the second worst year for wildfire damage after 2017.
In Greece, police have activated the country’s Disaster Victim Identification Team to identify the 18 bodies, which were found near a shack in the Avanta area on Tuesday, spokesman Ioannis Artopios said. firefighters, in a televised press release.
Firefighters try to put out the flames in a forest in the village of Avantas, near the town of Alexandroupolis, in the northeastern region of Evros, Greece, Monday August 21, 2023. Strong winds are fanning the flames wildfires across Greece, including 53 new blazes that erupted early Monday amid hot, dry and windy weather that sucked moisture from vegetation. (AP Photo/Achilleas Chiras)
Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Achilleas Chiras
“Given that there have been no reports of missing persons or missing residents of the surrounding areas, the possibility is being investigated that these are people who entered the country illegally,” Artopios said.
Alexandroupolis sits near the country’s border with Turkey, along a route often taken by people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa and seeking to enter the European Union.
Avanta, like many nearby villages and settlements, had received evacuation orders, with push alerts sent to cellphones in the area.
Overnight, a massive wall of flames ripped through forests towards Alexandroupolis, prompting authorities to evacuate eight other villages and the city’s hospital. The flames turned the sky above the city red as choking smoke and swirls of ash filled the air.
About 65 of the more than 100 hospital patients were transported to a ferry docked in the city’s port, while others were taken to other hospitals in northern Greece. The ferry then set sail with more than 20 of the patients for the port city of Kavala, where they were to be transferred to another hospital.
Deputy Health Minister Dimitris Vartzopoulos, speaking on Greek TV Skai, said smoke and ash in the air around Alexandrouplolis hospital were the main reasons for the decision to evacuate the establishment.
“We evacuated within four hours,” he said.
The Coast Guard said patrol boats and private vessels evacuated another 40 people by sea from beaches west of Alexandroupolis and transported them to the city’s port.
In the northeastern border region of Evros, a fire was burning in the forest of a protected national park, with satellite images showing smoke from the fire blanketing much of northern and western Greece.
New fires broke out in several parts of the country during the day on Tuesday, including in woods northwest of Athens and in an industrial area on the western outskirts of the Greek capital.
Small explosions sounded from the industrial area of Aspropyrgos as flames reached warehouses and factories, while authorities closed a highway and ordered the evacuation of nearby villages.
As firefighting forces are stretched to the limit, Greece has appealed for help from the European Union’s Civil Protection Mechanism.
Five firefighting planes from Croatia, Germany and Sweden, and a helicopter, 58 firefighters and nine water tanks from the Czech Republic were heading to Greece on Tuesday, while 56 Romanian firefighters and two drop planes water from Cyprus arrived on Monday. French firefighters were also in Greece, helping to tackle a blaze on the island of Euboea on Monday.
“We are actually mobilizing almost a third of the planes we have in the rescEU fleet,” EU spokesman Balazs Ujvari said.
The fire danger level for several regions, including the wider Athens region, was rated as “extreme” for a second day on Tuesday. Authorities have banned public access to the mountains and forests in these areas until at least Wednesday morning and have ordered military patrols.
In Spain, firefighters battled to control a week-long wildfire in the popular Canary Islands tourist destination, Tenerife. The fire, which has scorched 15,000 hectares (37,000 acres), is estimated to have already burned a third of Tenerife’s forests.
“The forest fire could be stabilized by tonight,” said Tenerife Governor Rosa Dávila, who nevertheless added that the fire “is still active”.
More than 12,000 people have been evacuated over the past week. Authorities said on Tuesday that 1,500 people were able to return home. Authorities described the blaze as the worst in decades in the Atlantic archipelago.
Large parts of Spain were under wildfire alert due to a heatwave that sent temperatures soaring to over 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit). While southern Spain often experiences extremely high temperatures, the country’s meteorological agency has issued an alert for the northern Basque Country, where temperatures are expected to reach 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) on Wednesday.
Greece’s deadliest wildfire in 2018 killed 104 people at a resort near Athens that residents were not warned to evacuate. Since then, authorities have erred on the side of caution, quickly issuing mass evacuation orders whenever populated areas are threatened.
Last month, a forest fire on the tourist island of Rhodes forced the evacuation of some 20,000 tourists. days later, two Air Force pilots were killed when their water-dropping plane crashed while diving low to fight a fire over Euboea.
In Italy, authorities evacuated 700 people from homes and a campsite on the Tuscan island of Elba after a fire broke out on Monday evening.
According to the Italian Society for Environmental Geology, more than 1,100 fires in Europe this summer have consumed 2,842 square kilometers (about 1,100 square miles), well above an average of 724 fires per year recorded from 2006 to 2022. The fires have destroyed forested areas capable of absorbing 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
“When you add the fires in Canada, the United States, Africa, Asia and Australia to those in Europe, it looks like the situation is getting worse every year,” said SIGEA President Antonello Fiore.
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Becatoros brought from Athens, Greece. Associated Press writers Joe Wilson in Barcelona, Raf Casert in Brussels and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed.
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