Thousands flee Greek island as wildfires raze forest and homes

Thousands of people have fled wildfires that are destroying vast swathes of pine forest and razing homes on Greece’s second-largest island, Evia, as devastating summer blazes rage from southern Europe to Siberia.

“We have ahead of us another difficult evening, another difficult night,” Greece’s deputy civil protection minister, Nikos Hardalias, said on Sunday, adding that nearly a week after the blazes started, strong winds were driving two major fire fronts in the north and south of the island.

Seventeen firefighting planes and helicopters were in action on the island, just north-east of the capital, Athens, where fires in a northern suburb and the nearby Peloponnese region were stable, although the risk of rekindling remained high.

Wildfires have devastated large areas in southern Europe for a fortnight as the region endures its most extreme heatwave in three decades. Ten have died in Greece and Turkey, with many admitted to hospital. Italy has also suffered million of euros of damage.

Huge fires also have been burning across Siberia in northern Russia for several weeks, forcing the evacuation on Saturday of a dozen villages. Wildfires have burned nearly 6m hectares (15m acres) of land this year in Russia, while hot, dry and windy conditions have also fuelled devastating blazes in California.

Anyone who has been paying attention will note that large-scale nature-related disasters are increasing.

Every few weeks it seems, Earth unleashes devastating violence of some sort or other. An earthquake—a tornado—a tsunami—a massive storm—a flood—a drought—a rash of wildfires. It levels property, destroys homes, decimates crops, claims lives. And another constellation of survivors are left breathless in its wake, tasked with trying to piece their shattered lives back together.

It is a dreadful reminder of an awesome and important reality.

In our modern world, industrialization has done much to insulate a great many of us from the elements. We have paved over our land. We have abandoned our farms in favor of climate-controlled homes, offices and malls. Concrete, steel and glass shield us from routine rain, hail, sleet, snow, heat, chill. These former crop-killers are now mere inconveniences, for most of us.

It’s only when nature gets really nasty—when rains turn into floods, when blizzards cancel flights, when droughts demand water restrictions, when a temblor topples infrastructure—that we even think to acknowledge the power it still holds over us. It dwarfs us. Impressive as our tower-of-Babel society is, it remains awkwardly vulnerable to the sheer elemental power of the planet in its fury.

History shows, in fact, that whole societies have risen or fallen because of favorable or foul forces of nature.

And in recent times, violent outbursts of these forces have been speeding up in tempo.

You can read more in our free booklet Why ‘Natural’ Disasters?