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Greek firefighters on Sunday were battling a second day of fire near the two outskirts of Athens.
Local media reported some damage to homes as well as vehicles, with 65 fire engines and 283 firefighters still operating in the area.
Greek authorities on Saturday ordered the evacuation of parts of the southern Athens suburbs of Voula and Glyfada as a precaution when strong winds ignited flames and threatened residential areas.
The thick black smoke from the fire could be seen as far as Piraeus, about 20 miles away.
Officials defended the state response to the fire, saying it was immediate but hampered by mountainous terrain, strong winds which occasionally reached stormy power, and the fact that there were three separate fires that broke out almost simultaneously.
The fire started in the early hours of Saturday afternoon. According to Deputy Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Defense Evangelos Tournas, the first fire engines were in place 12 minutes after the alarm was sounded, and eight minutes later, 17 firefighting planes and helicopters took off to join the effort. .
“Despite great collective effort, there was limited damage to some homes… but we avoided injuries or loss of life,” Tournas said, adding that there were 61 fires across Greece on Saturday.
Hot and dry weather, combined with frequent strong winds, make Greece particularly vulnerable to fires during the summer.
Last August, fires destroyed the northern half of the island of Evia, the second largest in Greece.
On Thursday, the European Commission said more than 200 firefighters and technical equipment provided by European Union countries would soon be deployed in Greece to enable a rapid response to major fires.
“We are still in the early summer and our goal is to mitigate the serious consequences of those new phenomena caused by the climate crisis,” said Christos Stylianides, Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Defense.
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