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And now, the news from this week.

Wildfires have destroyed an unprecedented area of forest, homes, and livelihoods. The rage mounts against the government both for not investing in a proper preventative policy and for evacuating areas with no sufficient fire brigade backup to save forest and homes. The government defended its work until the end, even with lies, while it announced compensations and reforestation plans.
 

An immense area of forest destroyed - along with many livelihoods.

“If Dante had filmed the Inferno on his iPhone, it would look like this”: This is the best description, made by novelist Francine Prose in the Guardian, of the extraordinary Evia video of the tourist ferry sailing across the water from the raging fire incinerating the island. The video is taken from within the boat, showing above the heads of the people in the ferry the unfolding catastrophe.

The people on the ferry were evacuated from the island. What makes this story even more extraordinary is that Evia evacuees had to pay a ticket for the ferry! Exploiting the people somehow as refugee traffickers do. When posts started circulating on social media with photos of the tickets, Shipping Minister Plakiotakis ordered that the transfer would be for free. And while the Shipping Minister is certainly to blame as he didn’t act on time, we wonder: At a time of such a crisis, when people from all across Greece are sending aid from their limited resources to the fire-ridden, couldn’t the shipowners who usually take huge subsidies from the state take their initiative and carry these people for free?

Meanwhile, while experts are still assessing the damage, it looks like 10 to 12 percent – more than 65,000 hectares – of all Greek forests might have burned this summer.

As of Wednesday, EU Copernicus/Emergency Management Service-Mapping estimated the burned areas as such:

507,950 decares in Northern Evia, estimating that it can reach 700,000. This is the largest environmental catastrophe of all time in Greece from a single wildfire. Only the forest area that was burned is estimated to be circa 272,000 decares. Houses, factories, schools, cemeteries, roads are among the infrastructure destroyed partly or completely.

The burned area between Ilia and Arkadia prefectures in Peloponnese is estimated to be 150,150 decares - the second largest catastrophe this summer.

In addition, the wildfire destroyed 111,120 decares in Peloponnese, Mani area.

84,540 decares of forest were burned in Attika. The PM himself said in Thursday’s press conference that an estimated 150 homes were destroyed.

As of Friday, Athens Observatory estimated the burned area at more than 1,1 million decares.

As of Tuesday, Greece had to battle nearly 600 fires in just eight days, issuing 65 evacuation alerts and evacuating 63,000 people, according to Civil protection head Nikos Hardalias. “What I know is that the choices we made saved lives,” he told journalists. “We didn’t underestimate any fire. ... We had to deal with a situation that was unique for the fire service: 568 fires.”

Greece’s Supreme Court prosecutor on Monday asked the police and fire service to investigate possible evidence pointing to the existence of an organized arson plan by a criminal organization, citing the “excessively large number of fires of unusual intensity and expanse” and the fact that many erupted simultaneously.

One reason the catastrophe affected immensely the people of Evia is that along with their homes and the forest, they lost their livelihoods: they are farmers, beekeepers, resin producers - and some are surviving from tourism.

The fires have come in the middle of the resin harvesting season, known as tapping, for resin. Evangelos Georgantzis, who heads the Resin Growers’ Association in Evia, said that about 800 families who were entirely dependent on the resin-growing industry in northern Evia have been affected, Al Jazeera reports. “I have 5,000 trees and they are all burned, I don’t know what I’m going to do next,” a 33-year-old resident told Al Jazeera. Resin has a variety of uses, including plastics and Retsina wine. 

A 19-year-old, Evia resident, who was helping with the fire, at a reporter’s kind urge that they will manage in time to stand on their feet again, he replied: “How are we supposed to live here? Our job is with the woods, with agriculture, how are we going to survive? All these will be reborn in 30-40 years. I will be 60 then… We want to live in the village, we have been born and raised here, but we are not given the chance… I should think, I should now go to Athens, somewhere, to get a job.”

The destruction for beekeepers is “immeasurable,” as one resident said, as the wildfire swallowed pine trees and beehives. But even if beehives had been saved, how would the bees survive without green? About 40% of Greek pine honey is collected in the mountains of Evia’s north, now ravaged by wildfires, Stathis Albanis, head of a local beekeepers’ cooperative, told Reuters. “First we tried to save our houses. Unfortunately, we could not save our hives,” a resident said, whose only 30 out of his roughly 130 beehives survived the fires.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday said: “We managed to save lives, but we lost forests and property… What we see today is what was burned, but we do not see what was saved. Thanks to the superhuman efforts of both the firefighters and the volunteers and the citizens themselves, countless houses have been saved.”
 

Only the people will save the people.

How do people react when their lives and their livelihoods are facing an immediate threat? What would you try to save if you were told to evacuate your home due to wildfires? Your valuables? And wouldn’t all of a sudden your photo album with family memories prove more valuable than any computer or jewelry? And what if you didn’t have the time?

Reactions at the time of such an overwhelming event are not to be predicted.

Moments of unspeakable grief, moments of moving solidarity took place while the blaze threatened to swallow humans, animals, and houses in Greece’s wildfires.

The photo of an elderly woman dressed in black in immense grief touching her heart as the fire was burning everything behind her was compared with Munch’s “The Scream'' and became the front page in international media. When interviewed later, 81-year-old Mrs. Panagiota from Gouves village in Evia explained what was happening when the photo was taken: “The blaze was coming closer and my husband was going with a bucket to throw water towards it. And I lost him and I was shouting for help. The police came, the people, everybody. The whole village becomes a fist when there is a need. Indeed, everybody came and helped. My mind was becoming blurry. I fainted”. They took her to the health center, but she wanted to return home. “Why did the forest have to be burned down? Isn’t that a shame?” As to her photo traveling around the world, she said: “I am not interested in that. I would be interested if I woke up one morning and things were as they used to be… I didn’t want fame. What shall I do with it? I want them to be interested in our place. All Evia has been burned down.”

Then, there was this moment when a journalist and an elderly man ended up crying together on live TV. The man had almost lost his voice (Due to the stress? Due to the smoke from the fire? Both?) and he could barely speak to Open TV reporter Evlambia Revi who urged him to leave his house as the fire was approaching. “And where shall I go?” he replied. The journalist offered to give him a mask to protect himself from the smoke. He turned crying and thanked her. The journalist started crying herself telling him “please, don’t cry, we’ll help you.”

An electricity company employee who was working to restore the electricity network in Kryoneri (Attika) gave his shoes to a firefighter, as the firefighters had melted from the fire.

A 24-year-old volunteer was saving other houses from the fire in Varimbombi while hers was burning down, as she would sadly discover later.

A reporter covering the fires, saved a kitten while on live TV.

The government “policy” was to evacuate one village after the other, haunted by the Mati tragedy three years ago in which 103 people had burned alive. Undoubtedly, what should always be the number one priority. However, it proved that that houses and villages after evacuation were left in their fate and mostly burned down. The firefighters simply weren’t numerically enough, while in many testimonies people said that they saw no aircrafts helping the situation. “There was no planning. They were evacuating the people and then their houses were burned like in Rovies and Limni villages,” said an Evia village resident.

There is immense anger over the response of the government and its evacuation-only policy, as documented in this Al Jazeera video (among many converging reports) from Rovies village, Evia. “I want to see the government hanged by that pine tree and burned,” one woman said crying from her completely burned house. “That’s what the government did.” Another woman said that those who stayed behind saved their houses, hiding under cars so that the police would not evacuate them.

Earlier in the week, a middle-aged man interrupted a journalist talking to his studio to denounce the government, ending with, “And they like to go on about anarchists burning things down in Athens [a favorite theme of the right]. Well, good for the anarchists. I shall become an anarchist.”

Meanwhile, the words of a younger fire-ridden man who said on live TV “Mitsotakis, fuck yourself” turned into a trending hashtag.

Last Sunday the Istiaia municipality in Evia updated its social media accounts with a picture saying: “Ourselves alone.”

After Evia residents saw villages turning literally into ashes after evacuations, they decided to stay and fight. Thus, they started defying evacuation orders with mostly the young ones staying behind to try and save their villages. In many cases, this worked. Fortunately, there were no casualties. But the proven incompetence of the state sets a dangerous precedent for people putting their lives at risk as they know that the state will not protect their property and forest.

Fifty to seventy young people stayed behind in Vouta, Kyparissi, Monakarya villages in Northern Evia and saved their villages from the blaze, with the help of a few firefighters. The fight was unequal as many were participating in the effort trying to put out the fire even using shorts and slippers. Residents and volunteers saved the village of Pefki after the elderly were evacuated and transferred to the ferry boat - some of them were even carried there, in certain cases on their beds. Gouvies village was also saved by its residents (you can see it in pictures here). One of the volunteer residents, a shopkeeper from Evia, talked to the BBC about his effort.

In another incident, an elderly man was captured on video trying to save his house with a branch. He finally made it. He is an Albanian migrant. When interviewed later, he said: “I felt our house, everyone’s fortune was on fire. I went inside, I felt at home since I am 29 years here and I did my best to put out the fire. I feel that I owe it to this land.”

Even refugees provided help.

Some more accounts on how grassroots effort saved villages, you can read here.

Even in the Varimbombi area, in Athens, some defied evacuation orders. "I hid so they wouldn't find me. I moved to the other side of my house and started to fight the fire with my water, otherwise, it would have gone," told Reuters the 82-year-old, who built his three-story house in the wooded area of Varymbombi when he returned home after 25 years in South Africa. His daughter Eirini who was worried to death about her father said that the house would have been lost without him." The fire service was nowhere. Fortunately there were volunteers," she said.

The common thing in all testimonies was that locals were abandoned, they saw no help from the state mechanism.

That is not to say that the firefighters did not do their job. But what can some 1,500 firefighters do in such an extended catastrophe apart from giving their soul in the battle? Pictures with fire-fighters lying exhausted on the ground moved the citizens. The comparison is striking when one thinks that successive governments had often sent circa 5,000-6,000 policemen to guard demonstrations in Athens city-center. As of Monday, nine planes and close to 1,000 firefighters and 200 vehicles from other EU member states had been sent to Greece. At the same time, the Citizens Protection Ministry was published on 5 August in the government gazette a decision for a 1.6 million euros purchase of more police vehicles. And as one commenter on Twitter said: "Thanks to all the countries who have given firefighting assistance. If you ever need cops, let us know."

Meanwhile, people from all across Greece have been mobilized to send aid to people in the fire-ridden areas. Basic goods like food, medicine, hygiene. It is characteristic that a man drove for more than an hour from Thiva to Athens amidst the heatwave to bring things to a collection spot in Exarheia. People were coming on foot carrying bags or emptying their boots in dozens outside the collections spots. Other groups took the aid themselves tο the fire ridden areas and other volunteers went on the spot and organized soup kitchens, like O Allos Anthropos. Plus, the Greek men’s water polo team who won the silver medal in the Tokyo Olympics donated half of their bonus, that is 100,000 euros,  for the fire-ridden people.

Greece has learned one thing from its decade-long crisis: It is only the people who save the people.
 

Fake apologies and lies.

“I am the first to apologize for whatever weaknesses,” said PM Mitsotakis in his address to the nation on Monday as public anger grew over the response to wildfires. He pledged that “if any wrong-doings, they will be detected. And the responsibilities will be attributed in proper time to whoever is responsible.' A fake apology it seems, as no official for the handling of the wildfires, was politically “decapitated” and the PM fully defended his government, stating: “We may do whatever was humanly possible, but in many cases, this was not enough in our unequal fight with nature.” He pledged support for those affected. Worryingly, he also said where the forest is burned “we will plant, not only a lot but also the proper trees.” Like the trees, nature chose for this particular landscape are not the right ones and they will correct the “error”?

Simιlarly, the following day, the head of Civil Protection Hardalias gave a rare press conference and he stated that everything was done by the book, blaming it on the weather and the multiple fire fronts. The previous week, Hardalias had said that the fire in Athens started with 6 Beauforts winds. Scientists had already proved him lying, but this week Athens National Observatory officially debunked this statement, as they published that the winds were 2 Beaufort and reached up to 3.

“At the time of the battle, you don’t shoot the fighters. And I am saying that the losses are from the fighters’ side, not from the civilian’s side,” Hardalias additionally said. First, we fail to understand how some lives are considered more important than others and secondly, Hardalias forgot the volunteer fire-fighter who lost his life last week as well as the 70-year-old man who lost his life in Fokida, Central Greece, when he was trying to open an anti-fire zone with a tractor in a burned down area.

Meanwhile, the government showed an Orban-like behavior towards the media. Before Hardalias’s press conference, the Greek Newspapers Journalists’ Association ESIEA had issued a press release slamming him and the government for refusing to accept questions from journalists during the official briefings for the wildfires (where no journalists were present). Moreover, as all these days of the crisis, the government spokeswoman Aristotelia Peloni had vanished, ESIEA also issued a press release slamming her for not informing journalists on the crucial developments. In the same press release, ESIEA was protesting for not having received any reply from Civil Protection minister Chysochoides on the attack against Open TV journalist and crew (we referred to in our previous newsletter) by a group of unknown people as policemen were reportedly watching the incident taking no action. It was just on Wednesday that the Greek Police ordered an internal investigation on the incident (no police internal investigation as far as we remember has named and punished a culprit).

The PM’s press conference on Thursday was another disgraceful moment for journalism in this country. For anyone who watched it, it became obvious that the questions, at least most of them, had been sent to the PM beforehand as Mitsotakis was turning pages in front of him, glimpsing at them from time to time. But one question seemed to have taken him by surprise. Vicky Samara from News247 asked him why Nea Demokratia upgraded high-ranking officials the SYRIZA government fired after Mati's deadly fires in 2018 (then-Police Chief Tsouvalas and Special Disasters Managing Unit EMAK head Kolokouris).

Mitsotakis first pretended not to understand which officials she was referring to and then told a direct lie in a live broadcast. Answering only about one of them, Kolokouris, he said he was upgraded by SYRIZA and then followed a “natural succession procedure” and became Fire Brigade chief. However, Kolokouris back on 6 February 2020 in a tweet had directly thanked the Defence Council KYSEA and its head Mitsotakis “for entrusting him with the leadership of the Fire Brigade.“ Similarly, ND made Police Chief during Mati Tsouvalas Citizen Protection Ministry General Secretary.

As to the rest of the press conference, Mitsotakis continued to use climate change as a culprit, claimed that “not all forests have the same environmental value,” while at a question on how he respond to the criticism of the policy of evacuations without sufficient firefighting, he replied that the criticism in social media was “vulgar” and he foreshadowed the involvement of companies in the “reforestation” his government will attempt.

Meanwhile, main opposition SYRIZA head Alexis Tsipras revealed that an experts report on Greece’s fire prevention and management had been thrown into the rubbish by the ND government. Tsipras had commissioned this report after the Mati fire in 2018. The Head of the scientific team was the head of the Global Fire Monitoring Center (GFMC) Freiburg University professor Johann Goldammer. Professor Goldammer had asked the then main opposition ND to provide consensus for the report so that it wouldn’t go wasted if the government changed. ND and Mitsotakis agreed. In February 2019, the then leader of the opposition Kyriakos Mitsotakis welcomed the publication of the report. And then, when they came to power, did nothing about it. The report was pointing towards a radical reorganisation of Greece’s fire prevention and fire-fighting, outlining major deficiencies in the system.

Very importantly, keep in mind that all forest and anti-fire policy goes wrong, with extensive building often following wildfires, also because Greece is the only European country not to have a land registry and forest maps.

On Friday, Mitsotakis proceeded with a cabinet mini-reshuffling. Was that his way of showing he does not intend to politically punish any of his cabinet for the handling of the fire? Till now, the only person who had submitted his resignation for unknown reasons was the head of the Army Air Force in charge of the Sinouk helicopters, four of which aided the fire-fighting efforts. However, the sub-general finally remained in his position.

At the time of writing, most of the wildfires had been contained, aided by the rain that fell on Evia, and two new ones had sparked.

“This is what climate apocalypse looks like from the deck of a tourist boat. It’s a vision we need to see, a reminder that the hard work of keeping our planet from becoming hell can’t be put off any longer. We have run out of time. We need to wake up. We need to say it till somebody listens: something has to be done,” the Guardian columnist we mentioned in the introduction was writing. We suspect that Greek authorities are really not into it.

And the ancient olive tree that has been standing some 2,500 since the Pericles era won’t have the chance to see if anything will change. It was consumed by the flames.
 

Read.
 

NASA: Fire Consumes Large Swaths of Greece: Fires in the country have consumed five times as much land as they do in an average year (with images).

How Austerity Helped to Ignite Greece’s Historic Wildfires.

The Greek wildfires and the failings of the state.

Politicians have commissioned, and largely ignored, multiple reports on wildfires.

‘In Athens there is ash everywhere.’

Greece is on fire: capitalism, crisis and climate chaos.

Greece announces relief package for fire-affected households, businesses.

Turkey deports head of Pontian federation - Athens delivers demarche.

The “Hot Spring” Showed That Greeks Were Willing to Fight: Ten years ago, Greece was gripped by square occupations expressing mass opposition to EU austerity policies. The movement’s strength was its ability to rally Greeks from outside the organized left — yet it was ultimately defeated by its lack of a clear political alternative.

Is it raining again in the British Museum’s Parthenon gallery? A leaking roof has delayed the reopening of seven galleries of Greek art.

New Covid infections remain above 3,000 for fourth day.
 

In Pictures.
 

Burning villages, orange skies: Greece fires – in pictures.

Devastating Wildfires Rage Across the Greek Island of Evia.

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