Athens:

Greek authorities have ordered the evacuation of Marathon town, the birthplace of the Marathon race, due to a raging wildfire.

Residents of Marathon were on Sunday asked to move towards the neighbouring settlement of Nea Makri, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection ministry, following the evacuation of six settlements in the area.

Facilities of the Athens Olympic Athletic Center (OAKA), the main venue of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, approximately 30 km from Marathon, opened to host many of the evacuees overnight, Greek national broadcaster ERT reported.

Eight people were transferred to hospitals with mainly respiratory problems, according to the latest information provided by health ministry officials.

Meanwhile, firefighters were trying to contain the front which extends several kilometres in the northeastern Attica region, according to the Fire Brigade.

The fire broke out around 3 p.m. local time in Varnavas, around 35 km from Athens. The fire spread fast fueled by hot and windy weather and thick plumes of smoke from the blaze have covered a large part of Athens.

The smoke has also reached as far as about 100 km from Varnavas, a settlement near Marathon, due to strong winds, which reached up to eight on the Beaufort scale, according to Greek meteorologists.

Approximately 400 firefighters supported by 29 water-dropping airplanes and helicopters, 110 fire engines, military squads and many volunteers have been working to contain the front, a Fire Brigade spokesperson told a press briefing in Athens.

Another big wildfire, breaking out earlier on Sunday near Megara town in western Attica, has been taken under control.

In both cases, mostly forested areas were scorched, and local officials reported some damage to houses.

Over the past 24 hours, firefighting forces have responded to 40 wildfires across Greece, the spokesperson said.

Authorities have advised people to remain on alert these days as high temperatures in several regions may increase fire risk there.

Over the past few weeks, the Fire Brigade has responded to dozens of wildfires fronts every day. Greece experiences numerous wildfires each summer in connection to heatwaves and arson.

This year, two people have lost their lives in wildfires while 20 were reported dead last year.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Athens:

Faced with criticism for his alleged poor handling of the fires and floods that struck Greece this summer, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged fresh funding and reforms in order to fight the “climate war”. The promises could reinvigorate the image of his newly elected government that has been tarnished by footage of residents taking refuge on their roofs in desperate need of rescue as rising waters engulfed poorly prepared regions. 

“Greece is facing a war in a time of peace,” Mitsotakis said in his Thessaloniki International Fair keynote speech on Saturday. 

“Over a two-week period, we experienced the worst wildfire and the worst floods in our history,” he added.

“The climate crisis is here and forces us to see everything differently,” he said.

The floods devastated the fertile Thessaly plain in central Greece in early September.

The storms killed 17 people, swallowed cotton crops and fruit trees and killed hundreds of thousands of animals on Greece’s breadbasket.

They devastated a country that had just been hit by “the biggest fire ever recorded in the EU”, according to a European Commission spokesman, in the northeast region of Evros bordering Turkey. 

Twenty-eight people were killed in the fires, among them two firefighting pilots and 20 migrants in the Evros region. 

The deadly blaze followed violent flames that ravaged the tourist islands of Rhodes and Corfu in July, with thousands of evacuations ordered. 

Mitsotakis also pledged a 10 percent rebate on property tax for anyone who insures their home against natural disasters, adding he is considering making such insurance compulsory. 

The Sunday daily Protothema saw these announcements as “a restart” for the government. 

The conservative leader admitted a certain “confusion of responsibilities” between the state services responsible for responding to torrential rains, as well as “the frequent tendency” to shift blame to others.  

“In Thessaly and Evros, I have heard the anger of the people,” said the prime minister, whose New Democracy (ND) party won an absolute majority in the June parliamentary elections. 

He has come under sharp criticism from the opposition and residents affected by the floods.

The government was blasted for the slowness of the emergency services and the lack of preparedness, despite the fact that Thessaly was already hit by extreme weather in 2020. 

Fingers were pointed at failures in cooperation between the army and civil protection in the hours following the disaster.

In just three months in office, Mitsotakis has seen two of his ministers resign, including one in charge of citizen protection, because he was on holiday on an island in the Aegean Sea while fires raged. 

The press has been buzzing with rumours of a cabinet reshuffle following local elections on 8 October, although the government spokesman has denied any such plans. 

The Minister for Civil Protection and Climate Crisis, Vassilis Kikilias, is also in the hot seat, according to analysts and the media. 

The Mitsotakis government bears “enormous responsibility” for the destruction caused by the extreme weather, denounced Effie Achtsioglou, former labour minister and candidate for the presidency of the left-wing Syriza party. 

She condemned the fact that “no serious flood prevention work has been carried out”. 

According to a poll for the private television channel Mega, 61 percent of those questioned have a negative image of the government and 66 percent believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)