Towards the end of August large parts of Greece have been reduced to ash by raging forest fires, but not just the climate is to blame for the conflagration.
Extreme weather conditions are making the news like never before. Hurricane Dean, billed as potentially one of the largest and most destructive tropical storms in living memory, mercifully missed the Mexican tourist resorts of Cancun and Cozumel last week but still left a death toll of 13 in the Caribbean. The UK news agenda has been dominated by the floods this summer which have left around 3000 people homeless and caused millions in damage. Also this week we have seen painful memories and renewed accusations leveled at the US government at the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The devastation in New Orleans left a staggering 1600 people dead in the USA in August 2006.
This week, attention has shifted to Greece where startling summer temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius combined with windy and drought conditions have fuelled widespread forest fires resulting in the deaths of 63 people. Press reports have focused on the popular fury which is directed firmly towards the government as a result of perceived failures in dealing with the crisis. But is it fair to squarely blame ministers, or is this just more evidence that our changing climate signifies a future more fraught?
The fires in Greece have raged over a devastatingly wide area. The Peloponnese Peninsula has been the main focus of the over 120 fire centres but also the eastern island of Evia has been particularly heavily hit. On the mainland, the capital itself has been beating back the flames along with areas surrounding ancient Olympia and towns towards the south. Flame fronts, driven by the wind and aided by tinderbox dry conditions are still proving incredibly difficult to put out and quickly become unmanageable for the teams still struggling to gain the upper hand.
The government, quickly overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster, within days requested aid from European Union countries. Fire fighting crews and planes capable of dropping vast amounts of water on the fires were brought in from EU and neighbouring countries. Emergency aid packages totaling some 72 million euros was made available to around 20,000 people this week, and yet scarcely had the money been distributed that 15 people were arrested on suspicion of making fraudulent claims for the aid money. Widespread criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis culminated in Wednesday’s protest in Athens attended by thousands of people, placing increasing pressure on the Prime Minister, Costas Karamanlis, who faces re-election next month.
Criticism is to be expected from people who have seen their entire communities devastated by fire. It is claimed the government response was far too slow in getting going and in many cases came too late for people who were literally driven from their homes by the encroaching inferno. The Greek government for its part claimed that the scale and sheer number of fires left it with few options. Furthermore it claimed there was the strong possibility of arson in many cases. In several news items the so called ‘culture of arson’ was discussed: ruthless property developers blamed for setting the fires in order to exploit the land set aside for conservation and parkland.
Something given little attention in press coverage this week is that the intentional clearing of land by fire is nothing new in Greece. Laws mean wooded lands may be legally protected whereas those areas without trees suffer fewer constraints. For years, unscrupulous individuals -not necessarily large-scale developers- have employed this method as a way of reclaiming land. Before this record-breaking summer, it was a common practice for those wishing to increase their holdings: set a fire, profess ignorance to the authorities and then develop once the land is cleared.
It may well prove that arsonists operating under the motivation of profit unwittingly threw the spark to the disaster waiting to happen, but authorities in Greece must now respond to a changing world living with the effects of global warming. As was painfully apparent with Hurricane Katrina in the States, the Greek contingency plan proved inadequate to deal with the extent and the nature of the August fires. In Greece it needs to be recognized that conditions are changing but also that the greed of individuals must in some way be dealt with. Complacence of both citizens and government towards the ambitions of those at the root of this problem must end in order to avoid another disaster on this scale. It remains to be seen whether politicians will pay the price in Greece and, more widely, whether nations can learn to adapt to ever more unsettled natural environments.
