ATHENS, Greece: Thousands of people were evacuated late on Wednesday as fires threatened a tourist resort on the Greek island of Crete and continued to rage on Thursday, fanned by violent winds, a local official said.
“We evacuated (some) 8,000 people” from the resort village of Agia Galini, Maria Lioni, deputy governor of the Rethymno area, told state TV ERT.
The evacuations were decided as the fire, which broke out Wednesday and had earlier killed two firefighters, got to within a kilometre of the village before changing direction in the evening.
The fire is believed to have burned down homes, agricultural facilities and farm animals, but the toll is unclear as the fire is ongoing, Lioni said.
Two firefighters were trapped on a mountain road near the village of Krya Vrysi and died as the winds kept changing direction.
“It was a dark day,” Lioni said.
A third firefighter collapsed and died during efforts to put out a separate fire near Gytheio in the Peloponnese peninsula.
The fire department had dedicated a force of over 200 firefighters and 53 fire engines in the Rethymno area in southwestern Crete, but winds of up to 102 kilometres (63 miles) an hour was preventing most aircraft from taking on seawater.
The fire front in Rethymno is over 15 kilometres long according to local civil protection official Giorgos Tsapakos.
But inhabited areas are “not under immediate threat” as the fire is mainly burning forest and agricultural land, Tsapakos told Skai TV.
A coastguard spokesman told AFP there were four patrol boats at Agia Galini ready to help with additional evacuations, including one from EU border agency Frontex.
“But conditions are extremely difficult, there are (violent) wind shears,” he said.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis paid tribute to the fallen firefighters on Wednesday.
“Our thoughts are with them, as well as with all the firefighters, volunteers and members of the security forces who are battling the fire fronts, in the midst of a new harsh reality that they are called upon to face every year,” the prime minister said.
Greece faces destructive wildfires almost every summer as prolonged drought, high temperatures and strong winds create ideal conditions for blazes to spread rapidly.
Nearly 100 firefighters were separately tackling a fire near the village of Plomari on the island of Lesbos.
The civil protection ministry placed several areas on near-maximum fire alert for Thursday, including Crete, the greater Athens area, the eastern Peloponnese and most of the Aegean islands.
The National Observatory’s weather website meteo.gr said wind shears in the Rethymno area had been recorded at up to 125 kilometres per hour, and wind intensity was expected to remain high on Thursday.