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Greece had its day recorded this week and wildfires broke out in the region, leaving much of southern Europe in trouble.
By Niki Kitsantonis
ATHENS – Greece was battling one of its record weeks Tuesday when an intense heatwave swept through much of southern Europe and stoked primary wildfires.
The meteorological service of the National Observatory of Athens on Monday recorded the temperature never officially recorded in the country (46. 3 degrees Celsius or 115. 3 degrees Fahrenheit) in the central region of Greece, Phthiotis.
Temperatures are expected to rise to 113 degrees Fahrenheit in Athens on Tuesday and reach 115 degrees in parts of central Greece, according to the country’s National Weather Service.
“We are facing the worst heat wave since 1987,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Monday, noting that the government was doing “everything humanly possible” to get a good enough source of electricity. The intake in the early afternoon and at night to the network is resistant.
While scientists have not yet established a strong link between this dam of sweltering temperatures and global warming, it corresponds to a general trend: heat waves around the world occur more and more intensely as climate adjustments due to greenhouse fuel emissions.
Research has shown that for giant heat waves across Europe in recent summers, climate replacement has been a significant aggravating factor.
The Greek weather service said the existing heat wave is one of the worst in 40 years and is expected to end on Friday, after 11 days.
More than 1,000 people died in a 10-day heat wave that hit Greece in 1987 and saw temperatures rise to more than 111 degrees Fahrenheit in the capital, Athens. The highest temperature ever recorded for Athens is 112. 6 degrees Fahrenheit, recorded in 2007, according to the observatory, which has records dating back more than 160 years.
This week, the government called on vulnerable citizens, especially the elderly and pregnant women, to leave their homes. The government has also opened cooling centers for the homeless.
The Ministry of Culture said all archaeological sites would remain closed from noon to five in the afternoon until Friday. However, the museums remained open and photographs of long lines of other people waiting in front of the Acropolis Museum in the capital were broadcast on Greek television.
There were queues in the port of Piraeus, where passengers waited for ferries to the islands, reducing the mask to drink from water bottles or use fans.
Athens’ central Syntagma Square, usually filled with crowds, was quiet on Tuesday as tourists huddled in the shade of trees or plunged their hands into the water fountain to cool off.
The accompanying heatwave and drought have fuelled several forest fires in Greece and other parts of southern Europe, joined by Croatia, Italy and Turkey.
Greek chimney fighters were battling a new forest chimney on Tuesday that exploded in the early afternoon at the foot of Mount Parnitha, north of Athens, causing many other people to flee their homes. One village and a children’s camp were evacuated and a segment of the road closure closed to traffic.
This week’s worst fires occurred in Turkey, where firefighters suffered a sixth day of wildfires along the country’s southern coast that forced tens of thousands of people from their homes, invaded residential spaces and threatened a force plant.
At least 8 other people were killed and houses and vast tracts of forest were destroyed. Strong winds and a dry environment allowed the fires to spread quickly.
“I have trouble breathing, the weather is so hot,” Gulcin Hacievliyagil Ayce, a Turkish television journalist, told Haber Turk TV on Tuesday in a report in the city of Marmaris.
In a video posted on the Twitter account of the city’s mayor, Mehmet Oktay, stood in front of a hill of charred trees and called for more air to fight fires. “Although we have been asking for more air from the beginning, today there is only one helicopter, not planes,” he said.
Flames and plumes of gray smoke rose Tuesday in the white villages of the city of Milas in television footage, and authorities warned of the threat that the flames would result in a forced closure of the plant. “We are at a critical point,” Muhammet Tokat, the town mayor, said in a Twitter post overnight.
The fires in Turkey have led to the evacuation of thousands more people from spas and villages, and the European Union has sent planes dropping water to fight the fires.
Turkey’s central government has been widely denounced for its reaction to the disaster, adding the leasing of aircraft from Russia. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said the country’s own planes are capable of preventing fires.
Sukru Durmus, head of the agricultural and forestry workers’ union, said excessive weather conditions had paved the way for the forest fires, but that the Turkish government’s misconduct and lack of precautionary measures had upset the situation.
In Greece, the largest chimneys occurred in the south of the Peloponnese peninsula and on the island of Rhodes in the southern Aegean, off the Turkish coast. On Monday, the government declared a state of emergency in parts of Rhodes after a chimney exploded on Sunday. it destroyed many hectares of forest and the evacuation of villages, a military base and a popular nature reserve.
The Greek chimney service said dozens of chimneys were reported daily, noting that there were 1,584 in July, up from 953 in July 2019.
“We are no longer talking about climate change, but about a climate threat,” Nikos Hardalias, the country’s deputy minister of civil protection, told Greek television on Sunday.
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