Enlarge image
Forest fire in Greece
Photo: ALEXANDROS AVRAMIDIS / REUTERS
In southern Europe there is still no end in sight to the destructive forest fires.
In Greece, large parts of the island of Evia and the Peloponnese peninsula are on fire.
In Italy, the emergency services reported around 800 missions across the country due to forest fires on Saturday evening;
two people are said to have died in a fire there.
In Turkey, too, six fires remained out of control.
In many places the red glow of the fire could be seen in the distance at night, it smelled of smoke and rained ash.
In the north of Greece's second largest island Evia, people fought the flames through the night with all means possible.
Almost 500 firefighters and countless citizens were on duty.
The residents tried to cut aisles with tractors and prevent the flames from spreading to their homes.
In large parts of the island the power has failed and more and more villages are being evacuated while the fire is eating its way over the island, which is densely forested with pine trees.
The Greek civil defense chief Nikos Chardalias spoke in the evening of two major fire fronts on Evia and an extremely difficult situation across the country.
Only in the north of Athens did the situation seem to have eased somewhat recently.
However, the emergency services are on high alert because new fires keep breaking up, said Chardalias.
In addition to the fire brigade, the military is also deployed there to prevent new major fires.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis spoke of a "nightmarish" summer.
So far 39 villages have been evacuated from Evacia, and on Saturday afternoon there were corresponding instructions for other villages by emergency SMS.
Navy warships were on alert off the island's north coast should further evacuations be necessary.
On Saturday afternoon, several dozen men tried to protect the already evacuated town of Nemouta in the Peloponnese.
The state broadcaster ERT showed them - only equipped with a garden hose - standing in front of meter-high walls of fire.
Tractors drove through thick smoke to provide water.
Fires that changed direction within seconds with the wind raced towards the place.
Helpers from abroad are also increasingly reaching Greece.
Two helicopters and their crew arrived from Egypt on Saturday evening.
Aid has also been pledged from Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Qatar and Kuwait.
Germany wants to send 200 fire fighters and emergency services from the technical relief organization;
On Sunday morning, among other things, almost 60 helpers from North Rhine-Westphalia should make their way to Athens.
French President Emmanuel Macron declared his solidarity with Greece on Saturday.
In a tweet that Macron sent in Greek from his vacation, it said: "France stands by Greece, which is suffering greatly from the fire disasters." Rescue workers have been sent to Greece.
“Solidarity as Europeans - always,” Macron concluded.
Thousands of volunteers in Turkey
The help is urgently needed, the emergency services and the residents of the affected regions are at the end of their tether after more than a week of continuous work. That is why volunteers from other parts of the country are increasingly making their way to the crisis areas, for example in Turkey. "Above us are at least 2000 volunteers in the affected areas," said a spokesman for the civil protection agency Afad. Countless others who travel to the fire areas on their own would be added.
It has been burning for days in the mountains of the municipality of Köycegiz in the western Turkish province of Mugla. Three villages had to be evacuated on Saturday night. Deniz Demirbas from Yalova near Istanbul has been out in the forest for four days. A veil of smoke hovers over the forest, in many places there is coking in the undergrowth, a kilometer further away thick smoke rises, fire-fighting helicopters empty their tanks over them almost every minute.
Equipped with a water syringe, Demirbas and many more humidify everything in the forest that smokes - but doesn't burn.
Volunteers have to stay away from fires, according to the instructions of the fire brigade.
Others use chainsaws to cut dry branches to slow the spread of fire in the event of a fire.
“It's our forest.
I would have a guilty conscience if I sat at home now and did nothing, «says Demirbas.
If he and his group run out of water, they try to extinguish the smoking areas with their bare hands.
Over 100,000 hectares burned
According to experts, well over 100,000 hectares of land have been burned nationwide.
Since the fires started last week, there has been repeated criticism of the government's crisis management.
At the beginning of the fires, there were hardly any operational fire-fighting aircraft available.
With help from abroad, 20 planes and more than 50 helicopters are now in action against the fire.
Numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) support helpers and residents these days.
They set up food and drink stalls on the edges of the roads leading into the mountains.
The fires in Turkey started more than ten days ago.
In addition to Mugla, Antalya was also particularly hard hit by the fires.
The authorities have now given the all-clear for the region, all fires in Antalya are under control.
The fire brigade is also in constant use in Italy.
She moved more than 180 times on Saturday evening in Sicily alone because of forest fires.
The popular vacation island was hardest hit.
The rescuers also had more than 100 missions in Calabria in the extreme south of Italy and in Apulia on the Adriatic Sea.
In Calabria, the flames blazed in a national park, among other places.
The fire brigade also reported two fatalities in the region who were killed in the forest fires.
dab / dpa / AFP