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Hundreds of firefighters in Greece were battling a major wildfire on Monday that broke out near Athens a day earlier and has raced through parched forest, destroying properties and prompting evacuation orders, according to the authorities.
The fire started on Sunday afternoon in Varnavas, a town less than 30 miles north of Athens by road, and spread rapidly within minutes because of high winds, Greece’s national fire service said. In some places, the flames were more than 80 feet tall. A spokesman for the fire service, Vassilios Vathrakogiannis, said that despite “superhuman efforts” to contain the fire overnight, it had spread “like lightning.”
The “extremely dangerous” fire was still burning Monday on two major fronts, according to Greece’s civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias: in Grammatiko, northeast of Athens, and Kallitechnoupoli, to the east of Athens. He added that strong winds and a protracted drought had created “dramatic conditions” for the more than 600 firefighters working to douse the flames.
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A house burned in Varnavas on Sunday.
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Two women embraced in Varnavas after being rescued on Sunday.
The blaze is one of the worst to threaten Athens, the capital, this year in what has been a busy fire season for the country, in part because of a dry winter and an exceptionally hot summer. Last month, large fires on the island of Evia damaged more than 2,400 acres of land and a major wildfire on another island, Kos, prompted the evacuation of 10,000 people.
