A generation is watching the Attica it knew disappear
One of my favorite pastimes is to photograph the countryside, forests and greenery near the city in the phase of regeneration following a large blaze. Few things are more beautiful in this life than the image of a cluster of small pines emerging where only a few months ago ash and burnt trees remained.
Millions of such new or much older pines aged 10 or 15 years were swept away in the most recent megafire that burned from Varnavas to Mount Penteli, destroying large areas of woodland circling the Attica Basin.
Burned again, after 2009
These reservoirs of greenery in Varnavas, Grammatiko and Marathon had managed to recover after the great fire of 2009, which unfortunately had also extended toward Penteli, reaching as far as Pikermi and Pallini, in East Attica.
But if it was only the agricultural and forested areas of the plain of Marathon and even further north that were charred for the umpteenth time – this once idyllic landscape with its hills, wooded slopes, arable land, pines, poplars and olives that reached Lake Marathon.
The disaster in Penteli is once again unprecedented. The fire entered Dionysos proper and, in addition to people’s houses and property, threatened the regenerated – after the fire of 1981 – forest that provided oxygen to Drosia, Rea, Ekali, Nea Erythraia and so many other municipalities and settlements. The devastation was also incalculable in large sections of previously unburnt forest in Nea and Palaia Penteli, where the flames leapt through gardens and yards, wreaking havoc in urban parts of Vrilissia, Melissia and Halandri.
No matter how experienced we are with fires in Attica, the disaster that knocked on our door this year seems unprecedented. It’s not just the size of it, the scale of a truly environmental Armageddon that will take years to recover from (if it ever does), but most of all the fact that the blaze stormed into the urban fabric of Athens where we should, theoretically, have been safe.
From 2021 onward, Attica is counting unbearable losses: in 2021 the big fires in Varybobi, Tatoi, Katsimidi, Alepohori and Vilia; in 2022 on Penteli, last year in Fyli and western Parnitha and Anavyssos; and this year the two-day conflagration that started in Varnavas and which unfortunately affected a nightmarishly large area of hundreds of square kilometers.
And now? Based on the theories of Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who spoke about the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance), already many of our fellow citizens are between the first two stages, judging by their emotionally charged posts on social media. Some less emotional citizens upload photos of their carefree vacations. I really envy them.
End of an era
Life goes on, of course, but for many of us this loss is added to others. For those of us who lived and grew up in and enjoyed Attica (one of the most environmentally gifted regions of the country) there is an obvious “end of an era” feeling here, which we will probably have to accept. The Attica we knew, with its three forested mountains, Parnitha, Penteli and Ymittos, its endless countryside and its pine trees, is a canvas of memories and images that is dimming, summer after summer.
The day after the disaster must surely be a day of fighting for the sake of future generations, but let us be under no illusions: We were lucky to be briefly part of an earthly paradise that was generously given to us, and now we see it disappearing before our eyes.
