‘Everything is ashes’: How this week’s devastating Greek wildfires could become the norm

Gazing at the burnt trees across the street from her home, 60-year-old Antonia Anastasopoulou talks about the children that won’t be coming to visit the Parnitha forest on the weekends, a common habit among many Athenians.

“This forest was Athens’ oxygen producer,’’ she says from her home in Varybobi. “The fire spread so quickly. Now everything has turned into ashes.”

Four days after the first fire started in Athens, dozens of others across the country are still burning, still threatening villages, thousands of acres of farmland, tourist areas like Evia and Gytheio, and archaeological sites like ancient Olympia.

“It’s like we’re dying too,” Anastasopoulou says. As she’s standing in her garden, she starts crying. “We came here to be near the forest. How are we going to survive here?”

Anastasopoulou and thousands of other Greeks and Southern Europeans are slowly realising they’ve become environmental refugees.

This past week, countries in the region, including Turkey, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Italy and Albania, are also dealing with uncontrollable wildfires. Thousands of homes and businesses were burnt in the region.

The Greek government blames arsonists and the long heatwave with temperatures that reached 46C and lasted for more than 10 days. The prime minister said on Thursday in a televised call that he was expecting things to only worsen.

On Friday night, and into Saturday, ferries evacuated 1,153 people from a seaside village and beaches on the island of Evia, after approaching flames cut off all other means of escape.

Critics say the government has done little to prepare for the wildfires that are a frequent phenomena during the summer in the region. Since the economic crisis hit in 2008 and Greece adopted austerity policies, the fire department has been understaffed and left without equipment. At the same time, fire protection zones were poorly maintained.

Scientists say authorities not just in the Mediterranean, but globally, should prepare for severe weather phenomena. With the average temperature one degree above preindustrial levels, the probability of such extreme weather phenomena increases.

“All models indicate that there will be another increase by one degree in average temperatures by 2040 to 2042 [if we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions],” explains Dimitris Lalas, professor emeritus of meteorology at the University of Athens, who has represented Greece at international climate change negotiations for more than 25 years.

“There were always forest fires in southern Europe and the Mediterranean,” Lalas explains, and says that the forests could recover if these fires happened every 20-25 years. “But, [now that wildfires are increasing in frequency], this ecosystem’s balance is lost and the damage may be irreparable.”

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In addition to the temperature increase, scientists are also predicting there will be a drop in rainfall in the Mediterranean.

“It’s highly unlikely that we will reach our [emission] targets for 2030, but we can’t give up,” says Lalas.

“But there are still many things we can do, even today. We should continue decreasing our greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time work on prevention plans; local governments should organise for extreme weather phenomena and also hire people to care for the forests by cleaning the dry branches. None of these were done.”

Widespread anger is felt in Greece, as the fires still burn for a fifth day.

“The government is to blame,” Anastasopoulou says, arguing there had been no recruitment of firefighters in the past two years. “They have only hired policemen. In my district, I only saw policemen and no firefighters. I didn’t see a single firetruck here.”

Kostas Kartalis, professor of environmental physics at the University of Athens, says locals should expect more wildfires in the future.

“The Mediterranean is a region that’s more vulnerable to climate change, like other regions such as North America,” Kartalis says. “Mainly because there is a differentiation in the atmospheric circulation systems and because the sea surface also heats up and creates problems in the climate balance. Extreme weather events and, in this case, summer heatwaves, create a very strong pressure throughout the forest environment.”

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For Kartalis, the climate crisis is a global problem and countries worldwide need to collaborate in order to slow down global warming. “It’s like the Covid-19 pandemic in slow motion,” he says.

“They’re two universal problems that, of course, have their differences, but both oblige the developed world to draw its attention. A different kind of geopolitical cooperation and solidarity between countries is needed. Otherwise, they won’t be solved.”

Additional reporting by AP