Serbian helicopters move from Evia to Peloponnese: New challenges for our firefighters in Greece

A Serbian helicopter helping put out wildfires in Greece; Photo: Serbian Interior Ministry, MUP

The wildfire crisis in Greece is not dying down, so the helicopter mission of Serbia's police force, deployed in that country, has moved from the island of Evia to another part of Greecehit by the fires.

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Three helicopters of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior (MUP) took off from Evia, where some rain finally fell, towards the Peloponnese, where fires are currently flaring up.

As the officials told AFP, the "fire fronts" are still active on the island of Evia and on Arcadia, areas on the Peloponnese peninsula, where new fires are breaking out. A new fire broke out in the forest area of Aspropyrgos, about 20 kilometers northwest of Athens on Thursday morning. After weeks of temperatures that went above 40 degrees Celsius, a "refreshing" 33 degrees is predicted for today.

Firefighters in the area of Halkidiki have started extinguishing several fires, which were presumably started by lightnings during a storm. Last night around 10:30 pm, two fires broke out in a forest area in another part of Halkidiki, in the municipality of Sithonia.

At the same time, fires broke out in the areas of the municipality of Kassandra in Halkidiki, in Afit and Fourka, and the firefighters once again said this was most likely due to multiple lightning strikes.

At the places where the fires broke out in the prefecture of Halkidiki, 70 firefighters are working with 35 vehicles, according to the fire service.

In the last eight days, 568 fires have been registered across Greece. Nearly 100,000 hectares of forests and arable land have been burned since July 29, the worst wildfire crisis in the country since 2007, reported France24. In the past two weeks, three people died, as hundreds became homeless, while thousands had to be evacuated.

(Telegraf.rs)