Exiled by the blazes

A detached house in the northern suburb of Athens, surrounded by pine trees. This has been the dream for Athenians for years, spurring a wave of intra-city migration of the middle classes, who were looking for better living conditions than those that had prevailed in the saturated center of the capital.

The dream of airy suburban life – both close to nature and the city – has gone up in flames in the last few years in Attica. Nature is now a threat. The place has changed. The heatwaves never end. The soil is arid and dry. The houses among the pines now seem to have been built on a war-torn frontier – on the edge of the climate crisis.

So what should we do? Do we surrender to our fate? Should we wallow in this paralyzing precarity (“Will we make it this summer?”)? Or should we migrate? We should probably think about life differently. Firefighting, no matter how well equipped, no matter how large its fleet, will not be able to defend our way of life as it was before the climate emergency.

Even if Civil Protection will be eventually headed by someone who will not fuss about facial hair at the time of danger; even if the Fire Service acquires more experienced and conscientious officers, like those we saw fight the flames in northeastern Attica, life on the urban frontier will not cease to be flammable.

Hasn’t the annual vicious cycle of disaster convinced us that tractors and helicopters are not enough to prevent wildfires?

In a few days we will mark one year since the destruction of Thessaly by Storm Daniel. Thessaly’s precedent is not unrelated to the destruction of Attica. Back then, everyone agreed that the severe flooding that followed the storm was an opportunity to reorganize agricultural production in an already exhausted place, to change the deadlocked routine that had killed the plain – as long as the state assumed its leading role, as long as it did not limit its role to the distribution of compensation.

What happened in Thessaly in the intervening year? What happened in the three years after the previous mega-fire in Attica? Hasn’t the annual vicious cycle of disaster convinced us that tractors and helicopters are not enough to prevent wildfires? Have we not been convinced that more radical thinking is required to protect the remaining natural environment and urban forests? That the entire state must be adjusted to the ongoing climate threat?

The perennial failure of the state to protect property and the environment does not end in the wave of discontent that the respective government will receive, until the ashes cool. The failure is experienced as the inability of the (democratic) system to fulfill its most fundamental mission.

The state of safety gives way to a state of fear. The people are left to fend for themselves against an indomitable danger, an incinerable future.