Charred trees, burnt out cars and skeletons of foundations that once housed a home. Within 24 hours, the fires, which broke out on Sunday, had plowed through thousands of hectares.
A satellite image from the EU’s Copernicus Earth observation program on Monday showed a scorched area of 10,000 hectares just kilometers outside the Greek capital, Athens.
The fires near Athens prompted authorities to issue evacuation orders in several suburbs of the city, forcing thousands of people to leave their homes.
Sakis Morfis, 70, lives in the suburb of Vrilissia and lost his home to the flames.
– When I left the house, the only thing I cared about was saving my dogs, so I left everything behind: money, possessions, everything.
In the municipality of Marathon, and the city of the same name, northeast of Athens, 30,000 people were ordered to leave.
At least one person is said to have died as a result of the forest fires and several firefighters are said to have been injured.
No longer an active front
But the fires that plowed ahead on Sunday and Monday were less active on Tuesday, Greek Environment Minister Vassilis Kikilias announced on X.
“40 hours since the extremely dangerous fire broke out in Varnavas, we can say that there is no active front anymore, but scattered outbreaks,” he writes.
The AP reports that the strong winds that fueled the fires during the day subsided overnight into Tuesday, resulting in firefighters no longer fighting a continuous fire front. But it is still burning in hundreds of places, the news agency writes, and efforts are now on extinguishing the less widespread outbreaks.
However, the winds are expected to pick up again during Tuesday afternoon.
Hundreds are fighting the fires
Close to 700 firefighters, hundreds of vehicles and 35 fire planes and helicopters have participated in the extinguishing work. Also several countries announced on Monday that they will send help to Greece to fight the fires.
Turkey, France, Italy, Spain and the Czech Republic have all announced they are sending aid to Greece. Everyone is sending planes and helicopters, while the Czech Republic is also assisting with 75 firefighters, CNN Greece wrote.
Heat record broken
In half of Greece, the fire risk is extremely high as a result of drought and strong gusts of wind, Vassilis Kikilias announced on Saturday.
Greece is currently in one of the hottest summers in a very long time. During both June and July this year, heat records were broken.
See more in the video above what it looks like after the fires.