ATHENS, 29 Aug: A massive wildfire was burning unabated in northeastern Greece for the 11th day Tuesday despite the efforts of hundreds of firefighters and a fleet of water-dropping aircraft from Greece and several of its European Union partners.
\nAfter burning across vast tracts of land, the blaze in the Alexandroupolis and Evros region was mainly concentrated deep in a forest near the border with Turkey, in an area difficult to access.
\nThe wildfire, which was blamed for 20 of the 21 wildfire-related deaths in Greece last week, is the biggest in the EU since record keeping started in 2000.
\nSix planes and four helicopters were assisting 475 firefighters on the ground, backed by 100 vehicles, the fire department said. Another 260 firefighters and one helicopter were tackling flare-ups of another major fire burning for days in a forest on the southern slopes of Mount Parnitha, on the fringes of the Greek capital.
\nAuthorities are investigating the causes of the fires, which over the past week have destroyed large tracts of forest, scorched homes and triggered the evacuation of thousands of people.
\nIn Athens, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis chaired a government meeting on how to rehabilitate the burnt forests in Evros and Parnitha. It decided to identify all burned areas for reforestation, take action to prevent flooding later in the year and provide access to food and water for the area\u2019s surviving wildlife.
\nWith firefighting forces stretched to the limit, Greece has called for help from other European countries, receiving 12 aircraft and hundreds of firefighters from across the continent.
\nFrance and Spain were sending additional aircraft to join those already sent from Germany, Sweden, Croatia, Cyprus and the Czech Republic under the EU\u2019s emergency response mechanism.
\nMore than 350 firefighters have also been sent to Greece from Romania, France, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Albania, Slovakia and Serbia.
\nThe top EU official for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic, said Tuesday it was the bloc\u2019s largest aerial firefighting operation and \u201cunderscores our commitment to swift and effective collective action in times of crisis.\u201d
\nThe Alexandroupolis and Evros wildfire, which broke out on Aug. 19, has scorched more than 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of land, according to the European Union\u2019s Coperni-cus Emergency Manage-ment Service. Copernicus is the EU space program\u2019s Earth observation compo-nent and uses satellite imag-ery to provide mapping data.
\nThe European Commission described it Tuesday as the largest single blaze recorded in the bloc since the European Forest Fire Information System began recording data in 2000.
\nAcross Greece, firefighters were battling 74 wildfires on Monday, with 27 of them having broken out in the 24 hours between Sunday evening and Monday evening, the fire department said.
\nArson has been suspected in some of the blazes, with several people arrested.
\nGreece imposes wildfire prevention regulations, typically from the start of May to the end of October, limiting activities such as the burning of dried vegetation and the use of outdoor barbecues.
\nAs of Friday, fire department officials had arrested 163 people on fire-related charges since the start of the fire prevention season, including 118 for negligence and 24 for deliberate arson, government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis said. Police made an additional 18 arrests, he said. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ATHENS, 29 Aug: A massive wildfire was burning unabated in northeastern Greece for the 11th day Tuesday despite the efforts of hundreds of firefighters and a fleet of water-dropping aircraft from Greece and several of its European Union partners. After burning across vast tracts of land, the blaze in the Alexandroupolis and Evros region was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-223225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223225\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}