Questions on how fire entered city
Woman dies, homes, businesses destroyed, with mass evacuations
As firefighters battled scattered blazes on Tuesday in the aftermath of the major wildfire that burned into the northern suburbs of Athens, most residents were finding it hard to explain how a blaze that started on Sunday some 40 kilometers away in Grammatiko village had reached their doorsteps.
The fire killed at least one person, a woman, and destroyed dozens of homes, businesses and infrastructure and triggered mass evacuations of residents.
The woman died in a factory where she worked that employed 17 people, according to what three employees told Kathimerini.
“Most had left the business earlier before it was in danger. The victim’s name was Nadia,” a colleague said. She was 62 years old, originally from Moldova and had worked there for the last 25 years. She had two children in her home country and in Greece she reportedly lived alone.
According to testimonies given to Kathimerini, the fire was essentially allowed to “escape” and to pass through Nea Penteli and entered Vrilissia and Halandri after crossing over a stream.
In response to questions by Kathimerini regarding the management of the fire, officials in the government and Civil Protection said that its extent and intensity were the result of many factors, and that there was no “window of opportunity” overnight – Sunday to Monday – for ground forces to act because the strong winds did not abate.
Major municipalities were impacted: Marathonas, Dionysos, Penteli, Oropos and Rafina-Pikermi, as well as Halandri, Vrilissia and Pallini.
“It was as if an atomic bomb had gone off. There was panic, I was lucky to escape,” said Giorgos Chrysanthopoulos, owner of a marble factory on Anapafseos Avenue in Patima, Halandri.
His business was eventually left intact, but the neighboring company with insulation materials was burnt to the ground.
On Monday morning, Stavros Velentzas, a resident of Vrilissia and one of the volunteers at the local association that runs fire watch shifts, was observing the fire before it even threatened homes and businesses in the residential area.
He told Kathimerini that the front was moving in an imaginary triangle between the 414 Military Hospital, the old Mouzaki quarry and the Davelis cave.
He said that there were successive helicopter drops there in the morning to prevent the fire from advancing to the first houses in Nea Penteli and then the aerial means withdrew or moved to other fronts, leaving the ground forces.
“I understand the fatigue and the dispersal of forces, but I think it was a misjudgment, they downgraded the spot. The fire’s course was predictable,” Velentzas argued. According to other testimonies, a resurgence of the fire followed after noon and crossed Pentelis Avenue.
The efforts to contain the last vestiges of the wildfire on Tuesday morning were aided by helicopters, planes and hundreds of firefighters and vehicles from France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Turkey, Serbia and Romania.
