Firefighters in Greece battled scattered fires on Tuesday in hopes of containing the remains of a major wildfire that burned into the northern suburbs of Athens, triggering multiple evacuations and leaving at least one person dead.
Strong winds that had fanned the flames on Sunday and Monday died down overnight. The blaze no longer had any active, advancing fronts, the fire department said, so firefighters focused on extinguishing hundreds of slow-burning areas. Reinforcements, including water-dropping aircraft and firefighters, arrived from abroad after Greece had requested assistance from Europe's joint disaster response mechanism.
Dozens of homes and businesses were reported to have burned, although authorities did not yet have an exact number. Winds strengthened again Tuesday afternoon, but no new major flare-ups were reported.
The European Union's Copernicus Emergency Management Service, which uses satellite images to map natural disasters, said that by Monday, the blaze had burned 8,500 hectares.
Helicopters, planes and hundreds of firefighters and vehicles were arriving from France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Serbia and Romania. Turkey's Agriculture and Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli said two firefighting planes and one helicopter had taken off Tuesday morning for Greece.
"I wish all the best to our colleagues who work with the motto 'Forests are the world's common heritage,'" Yumakli posted on the social media platform X.
Neighboring countries help
Relations between neighbors Greece and Turkey are frequently tense over territorial disputes, but they tend to put differences aside and send each other help when faced with natural disasters such as earthquakes and forest fires.
Several other Balkan countries also struggled with wildfires. Water-dropping planes and helicopters from Cyprus, Germany and Slovenia were helping North Macedonia tackle blazes that have been burning for weeks, while Bosnian firefighters and local authorities appealed for international help to tackle fires raging in a national park in the east of the country.
The Athens blaze began Sunday afternoon near Lake Marathon, about 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) northeast of the city, and coursed across Mount Pendeli, descending into the city's suburbs.
Firefighters found the burned body of a woman in an industrial building in the suburb of Vrilissia just after midnight. The woman, an employee of the business, was believed to have become trapped inside the building.
Paramedics treated more than a dozen people, mostly for smoke inhalation, while five firefighters suffered light burns and breathing problems, the fire department said.
Three hospitals, including a children's hospital, two monasteries and a children's home were evacuated on Monday, while about 30 push alerts were sent to cell phones warning people in several Athens suburbs and outlying settlements to flee.
Authorities said some people who refused to leave their homes later became trapped and required rescuing, endangering the lives of firefighters. The affected areas — at the closest, some 15 kilometers (9.32 miles) from the heart of Athens — typically have thousands of residents. However, it was unclear how many were away on vacation at the height of the summer season, and how many had obeyed the evacuation orders or stayed to fight the blaze.
Ten water-dropping planes and 10 helicopters were fighting the remaining flames Tuesday, backing up hundreds of firefighters on the ground, the fire department said.
