Fierce wildfires, propelled by strong winds, ravaged areas of Greece and the Balkans on Tuesday, destroying forests and homes and forcing the evacuation of an Albanian resort town, local officials reported.
The area has experienced higher-than-normal temperatures and arid conditions throughout the previous month, establishing perfect circumstances for the outbreak of wildfires, according to scientists.
Fire consumed the pine forest encircling a resort in the Albanian seaside community of Shengjin, prompting officials to evacuate residents from the area, reported Reuters news agency.
In North Macedonia, a wildfire close to the Greek border destroyed five homes and necessitated evacuations, while firefighters struggled to contain the rapidly spreading flames, local officials said.
Residents stated that power and telecoms services were disrupted and local authorities reported that a separate blaze to the north on Monday had burned buildings and killed a man.
An official from North Macedonia’s crisis management department, Goran Stojanovski, described the dire situation to Reuters, saying: “We have many fires. Thousands of hectares have caught fire. Half of the country is in flames.”
Powerful gusts were impeding the efforts of firefighting crews, Stojanovski added.
In Croatia, flames consumed approximately 450 hectares of pine forest near the Adriatic coastal town of Sibenik.
In Bulgaria, Nova TV, a local media outlet, reported that firefighters were forced to halt their efforts against a wildfire in the Slavyanka mountains, close to the Greek border on Tuesday when Cold War-era landmines began detonating.
On Greece’s second-largest island, Evia, more than 200 firefighters, supported by helicopters and water-carrying aircraft, successfully contained a wildfire after the authorities had ordered the evacuation of two villages.
Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the country had been dealing with “a very difficult summer” in terms of climate conditions.
“We still have a very difficult month, August, ahead of us and, obviously, we all need to be on high alert,” he said.
In recent years, Greece has experienced an increase in wildfire occurrences during progressively hotter and drier summers, a trend that scientists attribute to climate change.
According to Greek fire department data, more than 8,000 fires broke out during the previous year. The country has been grappling with hundreds of wildfires since May, coinciding with its record-breaking hottest June and longest-ever heatwave.
Europe is experiencing the most rapid warming of any continent globally, with Greece among nations most severely impacted by the consequences of anthropogenic climate change, reported Euronews.
Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the National Observatory of Athens, told Euronews earlier this year that the Mediterranean region is “a hot spot of the climate crisis”, adding that southern Italy, Cyprus, Turkiye, and countries in northern Africa are also significantly affected by the increase in global temperatures.