Two dead, hundreds evacuated from fires on island near Athens

Two dead, hundreds evacuated from fires on island near Athens ATHENS: Two people died and hundreds of weekend bathers were hurriedly evacuatedSunday after two fires broke out on the Greek island of Salamis near Athens in less than half an hour, the fire department said. While another fire on the Aegean island of Skyros was brought under control, a fire department spokesman told AFP that "two bodies were recovered" from the Peristeria beach area in the south of Salamis. "Over 570 people were evacuated on coast guard patrol boats and other vessels," a coastguard spokeswoman told AFP. Fire department communications director Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said the separate fires had broken out in Peristeria and near Selinia, two popular beaches in the island's south and east, within 20 minutes of each other. With hundreds enjoying a sunny Sunday at the beach a short boat ride from Athens, the civil protection ministry issued four evacuation orders in quick succession. The Greek blazes come as Europe battles a succession of wildfires breaking out in tinderbox-like conditions, driven by widespread droughts and high temperatures that scientists have linked to climate change. "SPREAD IN SEVEN MINUTES" But two people, reportedly an elderly couple, died before firefighters could get to them, Vathrakogiannis said in a televised address. With the wind reaching up to 61 kilometres (38 miles) per hour, the fire "spread rapidly in seven minutes", he said. Nine people required medical care for burns, state agency ANA said. Greek TV stations showed footage of several homes gutted by the flames. Salamis, just west of Athens, has some 37,000 residents, many of them elderly, and the beaches were full of people on Sunday, including day travellers, officials said. Battling through rocky terrain, firefighters managed to keep the blaze in Selinia from scaling a mountain and linking up with the other fire, Salamis's deputy mayor Thodoris Zannis told the ERT TV station. A fire department spokesman told AFP that the Selinia blaze had been put out by the evening, while scattered pockets of fire remained at Peristeria. The fire service mobilised a large force of some 260 firefighters, nearly 60 engines, 10 aircraft and seven helicopters, rushing in reinforcements from the mainland. SKYROS BLAZE CONTINAINED After largely escaping the heatwave temperatures that blanketed much of Europe earlier this summer, Greece has been hit with several major wildfires since late July, fuelled by unusually strong winds. Firefighters had largely contained a blaze on the island of Skyros earlier, an AFP reporter said. A local forestry official said the fire, which started Saturday, had burned some 1,300 hectares of forest. The same northwestern part of the island had been struck by fires in 2008 and 2014. Thirty-six blazes have broken out over the past 24 hours around the country, according to the fire department. Five firefighters have died so far, including a Danish pilot killed in a mid-air collision between two helicopters while battling a blaze near Athens earlier this month. Winds were expected to ease later Sunday. According to the civil protection ministry, no area will be above 3 out of 5 on the national fire risk scale on Monday for the first time in 10 days. Greece is hit by wildfires every year. Experts say the risk is growing because of human-fuelled climate change, which has made droughts and other extreme weather events more severe, frequent and longer-lasting.