Three Greek Firefighters Die in a Single Day as Europe's Burned Acreage Hits Triple the Normal

Three Greek firefighters were killed in a single day this week as the wildfire emergency that has consumed Spain and France all month moved east into Greece.

Two of them died on Crete, near the village of Krya Vrysi, trapped while driving between fire fronts as winds shifted. A third was killed in a separate blaze in the Peloponnese. The Fire Service counted 37 wildfires across Greece in a 24-hour span, driven by weeks of hot, dry weather and strong winds. More than 150 firefighters, four helicopters and four water-dropping aircraft were committed to the Crete fire alone.

Residents described conditions that made the fire impossible to hold. "The wind is unbelievable — you can't stand sometimes," said Chrissa Gioukaki, who lives near Krya Vrysi. "The flames were huge, it was really scary." Krya Vrysi and neighboring villages were evacuated, and tourists were bused out of the coastal resort town of Agia Galini as flames approached through the afternoon.

The Greek deaths landed on a continent already at a record. The European Forest Fire Information Service reports 435,000 hectares — more than a million acres — burned across the EU so far this year, roughly triple the recent historical average, across about 1,400 fires, more than double the usual count. Fire weather in the EU has been 43% more severe than the end-of-July average of the past two decades.

The national figures are worse than the aggregate suggests. France has lost 91,000 hectares, already breaking its full-year record with August still to come; in the Landes region west of Bordeaux, roughly 220,000 people were evacuated and 42,000 hectares of pine forest burned, with about 60,000 residents allowed home so far. Spain has burned 207,000 hectares, nearly five times its late-July average, and recorded its largest single wildfire on record west of Madrid; some 10,000 people in Castellón still could not return after more than 10,000 hectares burned there. Even Britain is in it — a major incident was declared when a fire spread across more than 80 hectares near the Sizewell B nuclear station in Suffolk, and England and Wales logged 393 wildfires in July, the busiest month on record.

Spain's weather agency put six regions on orange alert with temperatures at 40C (104F), while southwestern France climbed from 33C to 41C with strong afternoon winds. Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska warned of "three tough days" ahead even as central provinces improved.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pointed past the question of who lit the matches. "These fires may or may not be caused by humans, but in any case, they increase exponentially as a result of these high temperatures, low humidity, and also the atmospheric phenomena," he said. A fourth heatwave of the summer is now building across the region.