Heatwaves and wildfires: How Greece is handling the double whammy
The heatwave scorching much of Northern Hemisphere is putting human lives on the line and threatening power grids. Climate change is exacerbating weather extremes, making heatwaves more frequent and more severe worldwide. Recently, scientists have associated persistent heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere with a northward displacement of the jet stream. According to the World Meteorological Organization, heatwaves have increased sixfold in the last 40 years and last June was the hottest on record.
In addition to their impact on human health, heatwaves are also causing yet another intense wildfire season in North America and Europe. The Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center is reporting more than 1,000 active fires across the country today, of which 655 are “out of control.” According to the US National Interagency Coordination Center, about 29,000 wildfires have burned 900,000 acres across the country since the beginning of the year. And in Southern Europe, wildfires are still raging in Greece, Spain, Portugal, France and Italy.
Against this hot political topic, public policies are being put to the test. Arguably there is no better spot to observe the policy and political impact of climate-driven wildfires than the birthplace of democracy. Greece has had a torturous relationship with summer forest fires. In 2007, forest fires burned a substantial part of Olympia, where all Olympic Games in antiquity were held. Five years ago, almost to the day, a fairly small forest fire killed 104 people in Mati, East Attica, out of a population of about 5,000. This remains the deadliest forest fire of the 21st century and one of the top 10 since records began.
The ensuing scientific investigation showed that operational coordination was inadequate, evacuation plans nonexistent, and firefighting resources stretched thin. Evacuation orders, or really the lack thereof, became a subject of vexing political debate, with the then left-of-center coalition government claiming that they wouldn’t have done anything differently and that it would take a day to evacuate the area. All this, despite modeling work done by us and other scientists from Greece, Japan and the US showing the time needed for an evacuation of the residents at risk ranged from 57 to 83 minutes. The then government and its supporters coordinated ad hominem attacks on the one of us who had publicly taken the common-sense stand that evacuations save lives, and, yes, things could have been done differently in Mati.
The right-of-center government that took over a year later followed our recommendations and rolled out the 112 emergency communications service. In addition to being a single emergency number to report police, fire, medical and other emergencies, the service also encompasses a national integrated public alert and warning system, which provides emergency and life-saving information to the public through mobile and landline telephones. The service does not require an app or subscription, the messages go to all cellphones in an area at risk, in Greek and English.
Fast forward two years, in 2021 the country faced one of the worst wildfire seasons in its recent history. Spawned by an extreme heatwave, the likes of which the country had not seen in maybe a decade, almost 600 new wildfires started in less than a week across the country.
By then, evacuations in natural disaster emergencies had become the norm. In addition, Greece responded aggressively by creating a new Ministry for Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, the first among European Union countries. Fire prevention and management legislation changed. Penalties for arson got more severe, brush clearings on properties in the countryside-urban interface became mandatory, a multi-million-euro forestland management plan was implemented, and an antiquated legal framework was updated to establish backfiring as a firefighting method in the country. A nationwide hotshot crew program was established, and the number of volunteer firefighters practically doubled. Furthermore, the country acquired, through a mix of its national inventory and an annually recurring lease program, one of the largest aerial firefighting fleets in Europe.
Not a moment too soon. The Eastern Mediterranean is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. Clearly, the barrage of wildfires ravaging the country this past week will surely not be the last. Greece has an opportunity to leverage its momentum to keep up with a warming climate and provide an example to other countries in the region. Long-term thinking is the way to go; resilience in the face of the climate crisis is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. The proverbial prevention is key.
Eastern Mediterranean countries need integrated strategies that bring together forest and fuel management. They need to identify the most vulnerable areas and should not shy away from prescribed fire hazard mitigation. Greece in particular needs to absorb lessons from California and consider how overhead power lines can spark fires in high winds. In 2019, the state’s largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric, filed for bankruptcy because its high-voltage lines caused the so-called Camp Fire back in 2018. Arson is not always the cause of wildfires.
Public education is direly needed to discourage unsafe behavior in rural and suburban areas, and to dispel potent wildfire management myths, such as that aerial firefighting is a panacea or that direct attack (i.e. dousing the fire with water) is the only way to control a fire. Lastly, volunteers are the answer to sustainable staffing, and aggressive initial attack and evacuation planning need to become the norm.
Costas Synolakis is a professor at the University of Southern California and a member of the Academy of Athens and the US National Academy of Engineering, and George Karagiannis is a disaster resilience consultant in Europe.
