The wick of fires was set on fire in the winter

In early May, when the election campaign was going on in Greece, the report “Resilience of Greek forest ecosystems to climate change” was presented, prepared by the relevant committee of the Academy of Athens.

At the time, experts strongly warned of the dangers of forest fires.

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The fact that this year’s winter was mild and without significant precipitation has led to the fact that the drought in 2023 came much earlier. Experts emphasized that this could have very serious consequences for the spread of forest fires. “This year we have to be very careful about lighting fires, even barbecuing is dangerous,” Christos Zerefos, general secretary of the Academy of Athens and national spokesman for climate change, said in a statement.

The rather wet spring and early summer somewhat saved the situation, but this only delayed the start of the fire season.

A few days after the election, the scientific community returned: the BEYOND Center for Earth Observation and Satellite Remote Sensing of the Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens (IADET / EAA) issued a statement declaring that the winter season 2022-2023 characterized by higher temperatures than usual for this period and relatively low total precipitation over almost the entire country. This, combined with the increasing trend in burned areas in Greece, indicates an increase in fire risk in the coming months, BEYOND noted.

“This year we have to be very careful with the fires we light, even barbecues are dangerous,” Zerefos said.

As EAA research director and BEYOND operations scientist Harris Contoes told the media, “We’ve learned from historical analyzes that when we have a long dry season, summers tend to be very fire-heavy.” Characteristically, 2021 in Evia, where more than 460,000 acres burned, was preceded by the hottest and driest period since 2012. In 2007, there was a significant increase in temperature and, at the same time, a large decrease in precipitation, similar conditions were observed in 2012. “Dry vegetation keeps fire going even without wind,” he explains. In such conditions, even fire extinguishing does not help: the fire is extinguished on the surface, and it smolders underground.

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The rains that took place in May and June were not enough to change the picture of the drought (although they postponed it somewhat), and the fears were confirmed. According to data compiled by BEYOND’s FireHUB service system and the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), we are experiencing an extremely difficult year in terms of forest fires. Since Saturday, July 15, the fire department has been called to deal with 61 major wildfires. Thirteen of them were large or very large, and in two cases, V Dervenochori and in Rhodes the fires continued to spread and develop for several days.

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A study of the total area of ​​burned areas in our country for the period from 2010 to 2023 showed that the forest fires of the last two weeks led to a significant increase in the area of ​​burned areas, reaching the highest level recorded at the end of July, over the past 13 years. As Kontoes points out, while 2021 has the highest number of burned areas (at least for now), this July is the worst in many years and by a wide margin. In total, nearly 400,000 acres were burned, nearly double the amount from last year (2022) and three times the amount from 2020.

The five largest fires that have occurred this year in Greece are as follows: on 17/7 in the Greater Attica region, three fires broke out – on 12.27 in the forest area in Kouvaras, at 14.38 in Kallithea, Loutraki and at 17.08 a large fire began in Dervenochoria, in Boeotia, which remained active until 20/7. On 18/7 at 19.11 the start of a forest fire was recorded in the Emponas area of ​​Rhodes, and on 23/7 a fire broke out in Corfu. According to the daily hazard map, the fire that broke out in Rhodes on 18/7/2023 was located in an area classified by FireHUB as a very high risk area. The burned area of ​​the fire up to 23/7/2023 at 12:27 pm was estimated at approximately 107,170 acres. Characteristically, after the map was compiled, numerous new active fires were noted to the west and east of the burnt area, which indicates the dispersion and rapid growth of the fire.

According to preliminary estimates, the fire will burn out more than 10% of the island, with a significant part of the burned area within the Natura 2000 conservation network.

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