Stamata, Keratea and Serifos were reduced to ashes, one person was killed, houses and property were burned, but K. Mitsotakis says: “We succeeded”

Stamata, Keratea, even Serifos (where only bushes remain, and the forest has long since burned down) were burned to the ground, a 45-year-old man died trying to save his home, houses and property were burned, but Mitsotakis believes that “we did it”, and the responsibility lies with the citizens because they have “uncleaned areas”!

Once again, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has decided to blame citizens for fires, disasters and burnt property! Scenes of a biblical disaster in Serifos, Stamate and Keratea, with dozens of burnt houses, are not the responsibility of the state. Instead, he talks about citizens' share of responsibility when it comes to prevention.

But someone should explain to him that even if the owners clean up their plots, demolish their houses, move abroad so as not to interfere with the godly work of the state, the citizens' property will still burn, because the state and municipalities have not done what they are obliged to do. Firebreaks have not been created, the area around populated areas and houses has not been cleared, and, what’s worse, municipalities did not collect the required volume of branches and dry grass, which citizens collected from their plots after the Mitsotakis government threatened them with fines and imprisonment!

“We are entering a difficult period of the fire season, and without the help of citizens, especially in the area of ​​prevention, it certainly cannot be won…”, said Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Speaking about the fires and the response of the state mechanism, he noted: “In these days we have seen much better coordination, we have seen very timely intervention by the fire service, we have seen for the first time the enormous importance of drones for the early detection of fires.”

The thing is that drones detected them, but the fire service did not put them out. I wonder how they could extinguish them? They rented Bell helicopters, which carry a limited water load of 2 tons when they should be carrying at least four. Because these helicopters have floats, actual load capacity is less than two tons.

And he also said something no less surprising: “I think we saw better co-ordination between police, local authorities and volunteers and I think the result of those efforts was that despite the challenging conditions, the area burned and the damage was limited relative to the size of the threat. I turned to illustrative data from two very complex fires in Steam and Stamate. Each of these two fires appears to have burned less than 1,000 acres!”

But in reality, things are different. Fire in every area burned everything that was supposed to burn and stopped on its own, it is worth noting that by the afternoon the wind had died down and firefighters were able to act and put out the fires. This is especially noticeable in the case of Serifos, where, as we have already said, there is no forest, only bushes, but the fire reached the sea. In short, even those unfortunate bushes that grew on the rocks were burned out.

Attica and secondly Thessaloniki have taken a step forward in terms of early warning, thanks to drones. But this is not the case for the rest of Greece.

“We are extending the deadline (for clearing land) by another 15 days because this year state forces may be better prepared, our legal arsenal may be more powerful, but nothing – and this has been proven in practice – can be more useful than timely preparation and participation of citizens in collective defense against natural threats..

I would like to emphasize that this type of land clearing measure is being used in our country for the first time. It is natural that at the initial stage it showed some violations, but I think that even these shortcomings do not in any way diminish its importance. More than 500,000 land plots of all sizes are already registered on the platform. Obviously, our goal is to increase this number even more, despite the fact that we are currently in the midst of fire season. I think that in cooperation with the Ministry of the Interior and local authorities, we have started to remove the accumulated branches, especially in the areas of Attica, so that they do not become potential sources of fire.“.

The Prime Minister did not say that the costs of cleaning and all the “works” imposed on property owners are beyond their means.

A deadline was given until July 15 to clean up the areas. and filing the appropriate declarations, otherwise the owners face serious penalties, fines of up to 50,000 euros and even two years in prison! Because they can't afford to clean up their plots – a duty that falls exclusively on municipalities, which receive huge sums from various municipal taxes, and on the state.

Request POMIDA on reducing fines was rejected by Minister Vassilis Kikilias: “There are those who are careless, and there are those who are indifferent. I inform you that the law is here, with penalties and procedures in place.”

And why should they pay twice and do what is the responsibility of either the state or local authorities, who only know how to collect and create armies of municipal employees so that mayors can secure party patronage for themselves? For responsible persons who fail to file a declaration on the clearing of their land, the fine will be up to 1,000 euros.

For those who submit a false cleaning declaration to the National Register, from the point of view of compliance with the relevant obligation, it is provided a penalty of imprisonment for a term of not less than two years and a fine of one hundred eighty to three hundred sixty daily units.

The amount of each daily unit cannot be less than 70 euros and more than 150 euros, and the amount of the fine must not exceed 54,000 euros. Municipalities are already monitoring the cleanup, and drones are also used to monitor and then control the waste areas.

According to government sources, the extension has been granted because the matter is also a formality as a number of citizens are believed to have cleared their plots but have not submitted declarations due to technical or practical reasons.

However, it is estimated that by the deadline the number of declarations will exceed 1 million, and the cost that owners will have to pay will exceed 500 million euros!

The huge amount that citizens are burdened with is an additional property tax on top of the unaffordable taxes. It seems that someone in the government is lobbying for these decisions to land owners actively sold their plotsIt is no secret that the main buyers now are international speculators.

Source link