Olympic flames
Greece is a southern European country with a Mediterranean climate and vegetation that is typically Mediterranean in all but the high-elevation mountains. As one would expect, forest fires in Greece are a problem every summer, as they are in all other countries with Mediterranean climate. The problem has been worsening since the mid 1970s, in spite of strong efforts to strengthen firefighting especially in the last decade. This summer, however, the country faced an unparalleled fire disaster that made the news worldwide and left people wondering about the causes and the circumstances that led to it.
Signs about the difficulty of the fire season were evident early on. Winter snowfall was deficient, making it impossible for many ski areas to operate. Rainfall also was well below normal. In response to the signs, the government increased the firefighting capacity by contracting more heavy-lift helicopters (four Erickson Air-Crane models, seven MIL MI-26s, and five Kamov Ka-32s), supplementing the national fleet of 13 Canadair CL-215 and nine CL-415 amphibian waterbombers, and 19 PZL M-18 Dromader single-engine airplanes.
In the last 10 days of June, a heat wave contributed to an early start of the main fire season. Two large fires in middle Greece, the first in the area of Agia on mount Ossa, that killed two civilians, and the second on the extremely beautiful and highly visited mount Pelion in Magnesia, and many other smaller fires, were overshadowed by a 5,600-hectare (13,832-acre) fire that burned two-thirds of the Mount Parnis National Park in the northwest part of the basin that includes Athens. Three worrying signs became evident then:
- Ground firefighting was very ineffective and poorly coordinated. Many said this happened because an excessive number of top-ranking Fire Corps officers were disbanded in March.
- Without effective coordination with ground operations, aerial firefighting wasn't enough to stop the difficult fires. The aerials were in limited supply because of the multiple fires.
- High-elevation forests like the true-fir forest in the core of Mount Parnis National Park, which normally don't burn aggressively, were vulnerable early in the season.
Fires continued to erupt around the country in the first 16 days of July. These fires were fought with the help of the aerials, but with an ever-increasing difficulty. One fire near the village of Doxaro in Crete resulted in the death of three seasonal firefighters who were unable to escape a quick fire run in a steep canyon.
The most spectacular fire began on July 16 near homes at the base of Mount Hymettus, which forms the southeast border of the basin of Athens. Fanned by a strong wind, the fire moved unchecked for half an hour until six Canadair waterbombers and two Erickson and one MI-26 helicopters arrived and took advantage of the short distance (8 km) to the sea and controlled the spread of the fire in half an hour. The whole operation was documented live on TV.
A second heat wave hit the country between July 17 and 26, and with that came the second round of disaster. Numerous fires erupted; many escaped the initial attack and grew large. A fire that started near and burned through the ancient acropolis of the city of Corinth burned large tracts of forest and agricultural cultivations for three days. A second fire near the city of Nafpaktos on the north coast of the Corinthian gulf attracted a lot of attention. Then a fire that started on the July 24 at the base of the steep mountains in the area of Aigialia set the stage for the rest of the fire season.
Initial attack from the air was delayed, as there were other fires in progress. On July 25, with the help of the slope and a strong wind, it accelerated and burned practically unobstructed through the forests, agricultural cultivations and villages on the slopes of the mountains, until it reached the top. Within the next three days it burned about 30,000 hectares (74,100 acres), destroyed more than 70 homes in nine villages and killed three residents. It also set a new record for the largest fire in Greece in modern times.
In the last third of July, the fire in Aigialia, a 4,000-hectare (9,880-acre) fire on the island of Kefallinia and a series of large fires in the high-elevation forests of northern Greece that kept burning for more than a week, created the feeling that the firefighting mechanism of the country could not cope effectively. The crash of a Canadair CL-415 on July 23, which was operating on a fire near the town of Styra on Evia island, killed the two pilots and contributed further to the feeling.
The government requested help from the European Union and secured additional aerial support from Russia.
On Aug. 5, the northern part of Greece received some much-needed rain. In the northwest part of the country, thunderstorms caused serious flooding and extinguished the high-elevation fires that had been burning for more than 10 days. It also saved that part of the country from what was to follow in southern Greece.
On Aug. 16, a fire started near a monastery on the slope of Penteli mountain, the northeast boundary of the Athens basin. The initial ground attack failed. The northeast wind, blowing at about 25 km/h (16 mph) moved the fire front toward the Vrilisia and Nea Penteli settlements. The fuel was mostly regenerating pine forest after a 1982 fire. The combination of heavy fuel and dry conditions with a medium wind resulted in the development of strong, nearly vertical, revolving convection column above the fire. The aerial crews could not make water drops because of erratic winds and smoke, so the fire moved unchecked toward the two suburbs. Also, the clockwise rotation of the column resulted in a sideways spread of the fire flank in a west direction towards Kifissia and Ekali two of the richest suburbs of Athens.
The wind became stronger reaching about 35 km/h (22 mph). The smoke column leaned forward, making it a wind dominated fire, and the aerial means were able to start making drops. By that time, however, the fire had reached the settlements. By the end of the day the fire was partially controlled, after burning tens of houses and destroying an estimated 800 hectares (1,976 acres) of precious forest. Again, all this was reported live on TV, making people wonder about the fire suppression's ability to protect them.
From Aug. 24 to 28, a series of fires that started in the south part of Greece burned as if there was nothing and no one to control them — Greece faced its worst forest fire disaster ever both in the size of burned area and in loss of life and property. The damages were beyond imagination.
Fire danger had been extreme. Temperatures above 39°C (102°F) for three days were followed by a day of 50- to 70-km/hr (30- to 40-mph) winds and extremely low relative humidity. In addition to all these, the vegetation was severely water stressed.
There had been no rain in southern Greece for the whole summer, and for the first time on record, there had been three heat waves during the summer: the first in late June, the second in July and the third in August, just before the onset of the disaster. The level of water stress of the vegetation is reflected in predawn water potential measurements for August, made near Athens over a four-year period. (See “Water Potential,” page 13.) The summers of 2003, 2004 and 2005 had at least one rainfall event. In 2006, the last rainfall came in early in July. The water potential showed a pronounced drop by late August 2006, when two major fires occurred in Kassandra Peninsula (northern Greece) and in the area of Mani in south Peloponnese. Although there had been some rain in late May, June and July 2007 had been dry.
When fires starting in this explosive situation were faced with ineffective initial attack from the ground, the stage was set for disaster. Two fires started on Aug. 23, one on Mount Parnon east of Sparta and the other on Mount Taygetos west of Sparta in Peloponnese. They soon raged out of control. A new fire erupted the next day near the towns of Oitylo and Areopolis, roughly 30 km (20 miles) south of the fire of Taygetos. This fire caused the first six deaths and attracted the attention of the fire service and the media — until news of massive fatalities at a new fire in Ilia (western Peloponnese) came that afternoon.
As the news about the deaths started adding up, coordination started failing. New fires that started in other parts of Ilia, Arcadia, Messinia, Corinthia in Peloponese, and on Evia island north of Athens did not receive a proper initial attack. They escaped and started growing quickly. They were not attacked methodically. Fire trucks were sent to the villages in the way of the fires to protect them. Evacuations were ordered or spontaneously started from panic. The perimeters of all fires were practically abandoned. The fires grew and some united with each other. The large fleet of aerials did not offer effective help partly because of the extreme conditions (on some occasions Canadair planes were not able to operate safely due to the wind) but also because ground forces below them could not finish extinguishing the fire.
For the next four days, aerial and ground forces were seen as ineffective, thanks to the large number and size of fires and the countless pleas for help, many of them relayed through the 24-hour live TV coverage. The planes and helicopters were sent in for a few drops only to then be called-off to another fire.
Not realizing that tactical firefighting was doomed to fail, the fire service kept pushing people to evacuate villages indiscriminately. The fire service should have coordinated capable villagers to prepare their homes and agricultural fields (such as clearing grasses in their olive groves) in advance, fight flanking fires with their agricultural equipment or protect themselves in the village. To its credit, the government declared a general state of emergency, mobilized the army and asked for international help.
The fires in Ilia started merging with each other by the following day. The situation turned critical as the first aerial reinforcements from other countries started arriving. One of the fires reached the ancient site of Olympia, which was surrounded by mature pine forest. The site and its museum were barely saved by focused ground forces, strong aerial support and an on-ground automatic sprinkler system installed before the 2004 Olympic Games. All the forest around it, however, burned down.
Things started to improve by Aug. 27 as relative humidity increased substantially, the wind calmed and the temperature dropped. Locals, realizing they would be homeless if they abandoned their villages, often refused to evacuate and stayed to defended their homes (which are generally built with stones or bricks and reinforced concrete) and cultivations. Foresters with forest workers started building firebreaks and performing small scale firing-out operations. A ground crew from Cyprus that came to help, successfully used backfiring techniques on Evia island, to the surprise of the reporters who had never witnessed this technique being used by the Fire Corps. Heavy equipment from the army created firebreaks on relatively flat ground.
By that time, a huge aerial fleet was operating in the skies over Peloponnese and Evia. Twenty-three airplanes and 18 helicopters from European Union and non-European Union countries supplements the Greek aerial forces, forming arguably the largest aerial firefighting operating anywhere. Significant international ground forces also started to arrive, creating a model of solidarity that hopefully will be repeated if another country finds itself in need.
Taking advantage of the calmer winds, the firefighting forces brought most of the fires under partial control in the next few days. However, the Greek TV channels were showing battles against fire re-starts along the large fire perimeters. Much of their footage looked as a textbook example of the ineffectiveness of aerial firefighting when it is not followed by well-coordinated ground firefighting.
Sixty-six people died in these fires. Most of the dead were caught in the open trying to flee or surrounded by the fire as they were trying to save their property. These deaths, combined with the 10 fatalities in earlier fires, far exceeded anything that the country had experienced in the past.
More than 110 villages were destroyed leaving thousands of people homeless, surrounded by blackened land. The government tried to handle the aftermath. It increased support for those whose properties were destroyed. It also talked about an organized arson plan, without, however, presenting any evidence.
More than two-thirds of the prefecture of Ilia burned. Large areas also burned in the prefectures of Arcadia, Laconia, Messinia, Corinthia, and on the island of Evia. Much of the burned area is agricultural, mainly olive groves. Estimates of the total financial damage from these fires vary tremendously at this time (they may be influenced by politics). An independent estimate by the international assessment firm Standard & Poors brings the damage in the range 3 billion to 5 billion Euro, corresponding to 1.4% to 2.4% of the country's gross domestic product.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System, Greece has lost about 270,000 hectares (670,000 acres) of vegetation to fire this year. The vast majority — 184,000 hectares (455,000 acres) — was burned in just four days, more than have been lost in any year since records. The fire in Ilia far exceeded 40,000 hectares (99,000 acres), breaking the all time record set in Aigialia only a month earlier.
There is no question that the fire season of 2007 was a very difficult one in Greece; however, it can't be considered unique and it's overly simplistic to attribute the disaster to extreme conditions due to climate change. For example, rainfall between 1992-1994 was so deficient that the water reserves of Athens dropped to alarming levels and special measures had to be taken to reduce water consumption. Fires were difficult in those years and lives were lost, but the burned area remained at about 60,000 hectares (148,000 acres) for each of the three years.
If adverse conditions are not the only blame for this disaster one should look for other contributing reasons. There also are some long-term weaknesses in the Greek Fire Corps' current fire management scheme.
The corps heavy reliance on aerial means during the initial attack has led to relative complacency from the ground crews. Unfortunately this aerial-heavy approach failed in 2007 due to the fire's quick acceleration and the large number of fires.
Another problem is that ground forces almost exclusively rely on water to extinguish the fires. Use of hand tools is limited, and there is no provision for use of fire for fire control methods such as backfire or even burning-out. As a result, effectiveness in areas with few roads (such as in high-elevation forests) was very low.
The fire corps lack sophistication in coordinating large-scale firefighting operations. Use of maps, fire behavior prediction tools, fuel maps and the like are limited. Without good coordination by well-trained and experienced officers, the often-heroic efforts of the firefighters are wasted.
Finally, the huge budget spent for forest firefighting every year is used mainly for contracting helicopters and very little money is diverted for other important purposes such as modern training, purchasing personal protection equipment or obtaining additional tools for alternative fire operations.
The Forest Service, after relinquishing forest firefighting responsibility to the Fire Corps in 1998, has practically been excluded from fire management operations. Although, according to the law it is still responsible for fire prevention, its deteriorating status and lack of funding preclude any serious work in this area.
Forest management has nearly been abandoned for the same reasons. The result is increasing biomass in the forest. And forest road conditions have deteriorated due to lack of funding for maintenance.
The problems have been obvious for sometime. However, as firefighting is more straightforward and impressive, it has been impossible to convince decision-makers of the need for a balanced approach that will involve all players in the system and maximize their contribution toward an integrated and effective fire-management scheme. One can only hope that this most recent disaster will bring to light the flaws and propel changes in the right direction. Otherwise, if emphasis is given only to quantitatively increasing the firefighting capacity, purchasing more aerial means and hiring more firefighters, it won't be long before Greece will experience another round of disasterous fires.
Dr. Gavriil Xanthopoulos is a member of the National Agricultural Research Foundation's Institute of Mediterranean Forest Ecosystems and Forest Products Technology in Athens. He also serves on the board of directors of the International Association of Wildland Fire.
| SPECIES | WATER POTENTIAL (BAR) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug. 5, 2003 | Aug. 4, 2004 | Aug 7, 2005 | Aug. 23, 2006 | Aug. 9, 2007 | |
| Pinus halepensis | -7.3 | -6.5 | -9.0 | -23.7 | -21.0 |
| Quercus coccifera | -19.0 | -20.0 | -14.5 | -28.5 | -34.5 |
| Cistus creticus | -20.5 | -43.6 | -26.0 | -61.0 | -45.0 |
| COUNTRY | AERIAL RESOURCES | GROUND RESOURCES | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airplanes | Helicopters | Personnel | Vehicles | |
| France | 4 | 72 | ||
| Spain | 4 | |||
| Italy | 1 | |||
| Croatia | 1 | |||
| Turkey | 1 | |||
| Portugal | 1 | |||
| Russia | 1 | |||
| Romania | 1 | |||
| Serbia | 7 | 55 | 7 | |
| Germany | 5 | |||
| Switzerland | 4 | |||
| Netherlands | 3 | |||
| Austria | 3 | 2 | ||
| Norway | 1 | |||
| Sweden | 1 | |||
| Slovenia | 1 | |||
| Cyprus | 139 | 14 | ||
| Israel | 60 | |||
| Hungary | 19 | 5 | ||
| Albania | 4 | 1 | ||
| Bulgaria | 46 | 5 | ||
| International Volunteers | 7 | |||
| Total | 23 | 18 | 402 | 32 |
| Source: Greek Fire Corps | ||||
