Wildfires Europe: Greece, Tenerife, and Czech Republic battle new and ongoing blazes
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At least fifty-three new wildfires broken out across Greece between Saturday and Sunday evening as the National Fire Service struggled to contain the blazes burning in Evros, Lesbos, and near the western town of Grevena.
The inferno at the Dadia-Lefkimi-Soufli National Park has been burning for four consecutive days.
In a bid to avoid casualties, Elias Vintzis, the regional governor of Dadia, says, “buses have been sent and residents are going to be transferred to nearby hotels.”
Christos Stylianides, the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister, inspected the damage on Sunday.
“We will next visit the southwest front of the fire to witness the work done there and examine ways to create fire breaks,” he said.
Moving east to the Canary Islands, some 600 people have evacuated their homes after a forest fire broke out in Tenerife on Thursday.
The flames have already scorched over two thousand hectares of land with a perimeter some 26 kilometers wide.
Back in central Europe, firefighters have declared the highest level of alert after a fire burst out of control at the Bohemian Switzerland National Park in Czech Republic.
The park director says human negligence was likely the cause of the blaze.
“The cause is not exactly known, but I am convinced that it is man-made because there was no storm or anything like that, so some irresponsible person must have made a fire, left and, of course, this is the consequence.”
No reports of injuries have surfaced.