The Greek Minister for the weather crisis and civil protection states with determination: “We are tackling the weather crisis with determination”.
The fire season in Greece officially begins in May, but dozens of fires have already been put out over the last month, after temperatures reached 30 degrees Celsius at the end of March, a considerably higher value. high compared to the peaks recorded in the last ten years.
“It’s already summer for us,” said Fire Lieutenant Colonel Ioannis Kolovos during a recent training exercise. “The truth is that the fire season started prematurely and has continued over the last five years.”
Its elite 10-member Special Fire Operations Unit team is equipped with tools needed to contain fires: chainsaws, specialized rakes, weather instruments, tablets and torches to burn fire barriers on slopes.
This year, Greece is doubling the number of firefighters in specialized units to about 1,300, and adopting tactics from the United States to try to get ahead of fires with air units ready to build breaks in the expected path of blazes.
Specialized tools surpass water as the primary weapon against fires
Team members include experienced foresters and firefighters with varied skills, many developed in training with colleagues in France, Spain and the United States.
“We can position ourselves in optimal locations that may be difficult to reach on foot and implement fire suppressionusing various specialized methods,” said firefighter Dimitris ‘Jim’ Priftis while assisting trainees in a region near the fire-ravaged capital in the summer of 2023.
“Using water is no longer our main weapon against fires, it is our tools,” he said. “We’re taking a more scientific approach to fires, measuring the humidity, the wind – it’s a more planned method.”
Funded mainly by the European Union, Greece has launched a €2.1 billion program to revamp its disaster response capacity, ordering new firefighting planes, drones, fire trucks, training facilities and a network of sensors based on artificial intelligence to detect early signs of smoke and flooding.
However, the new equipment will not arrive until 2025. Greek authorities are redoubling efforts in training and new methods of fighting fires, ahead of another difficult season this year.
Greece faces an increasingly serious annual challenge from fires
Fires burned around 1,750 square kilometers last year, including the European Union’s worst fire ever recorded in northern Greece.
With its windy and mountainous terrain and islands that are difficult to reach, Greece faces a massive annual challenge in defending multiple urban settlements that overlap with forested areas at risk of fire.
The weather is also getting warmer: Last winter was the warmest since modern records began in 1960, according to the National Observatory of Athens, which analyzed European Union satellite data. The six warmest winters recorded in Greece occurred in the last decade.
This comes against a backdrop of new data revealing that Europe is the fastest warming continent in the world, with temperatures rising at around double the global average.
Standing at the main disaster response center in Athens, Vassilis Kikilias, the minister for weather crisis and civil protection, says authorities expect annual conditions to worsen further.
“It’s going to be a very difficult fire season, a very difficult summer,” Kikilias says. “We had a dry winter and autumn temperatures that lasted into December. So we are tackling the weather crisis head-on.”
How is Greece preparing for this year’s fire season?
In April, firefighters intensified exercises and training, using new facilities such as the Fire Dragon, a €1.2 million trailer used to simulate the inside of a burning building. Firefighter teams with heavy protective gear and oxygen tanks use it to practice close combat and rescue techniques.
Nearby, regular firefighters and trainees climb through a mesh maze in the dark to practice working in confined spaces. Participants in full gear first train on treadmills and other exercise machines, then climb through the maze while strobe lights, smoke and loud noises are added to disorient them.
“The fire maze helps firefighters in a dark environment, in an unknown context, in the presence of fire, to enter the area, investigate, possibly carry out a rescue and find a way out,” said the Lieutenant Colonel of the Fire Brigade Vrasidas Grafakos, commander of the training center.
“It is to effectively train them to be ready for fires in buildings, for frontline activity.”
Pensioner Chrysoula Renieri is among those who lost their homes in the 2023 fires that devastated forests on the island of Rhodes in northeastern Greece and areas west of Athens.
Renieri visited his destroyed home last week. As he walked through the blackened rooms, he described how his family felt helpless as the approaching fire knocked out power and water supplies before the flames took over the house. “No one helped us and everything burned down. It’s all gone.”
He said he hoped the Fire Service’s new equipment and methods could make a difference to others.
“I wish this would happen, so many homes could be saved,” he said. “Let’s hope, because summer is coming again and the torment will begin.”
