Wildfires ease in Turkey, Greece
Ankara/Athens, Aug 11 (EFE).- Most of the wildfires that have been raging through parts of Turkey and Greece have been partially brought under control on Wednesday.
Only a handful of blazes in the western Turkish province of Mugla have not been contained, two weeks after the outbreak of the worst wildfires in the country for years, Bekir Pakdemirli of the ministry of agriculture and forestry said.
In Greece, the situation has improved on the hardest hit island of Euboea, as well as in the regional units of Elis and Arcadia on the southwestern Peloponnese Peninsula, where residents of 20 towns were forced to evacuate their homes on Tuesday.
Some 870 fire fighters are currently working on Euboea, the largest Greek island after Crete, to bring the flames under control.
A total of 382 firefighters, as well as three planes, worked through the night to prevent the blazes from reaching Elis and Arcadia, where fires had broken out previously.
Earlier this week, Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis apologized for the “weakness” in the government’s management of the crisis, and assured that once the fires are under control, those responsible would be identified..
The over 500 fires that have devastated some 90,000 hectares across Greece in the past week have highlighted shortcomings in numbers of firefighters, airplanes and helicopters.
Spain, Cyprus, France, Egypt, Ukraine and Romania have all sent firefighting planes and helicopters to help Greece contain the flames.
The fires have come amid a historic heat wave, the worst the country has seen in four decades.EFE
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