Greece not ready for forest fire season

Reuters: Greece has failed to ensure it is ready for the forest fire season, a year after devastating wild fires killed 65 people, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Greece said on Tuesday. Last summer's fires, the worst in decades, also scorched thousands of hectares of forest and farmland, destroyed villages and threatened archaeological sites.

"Despite the (government's) efforts there are still problems that, if not dealt with, will lead to the same problems as last year, or worse," Dimitris Karavellas, head of the Greek branch of the WWF, told a news conference. "I'm afraid we will have fires similar to last year's ... We must face the fact that our fire protection system is not efficient," Karavellas said….

A forest fire at night in Assiros, Greece, shot by Konstantinos Stampoulis (Geraki), Wikimedia Commons, under the GNU Free Documentation License v.1.2 and Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (cc-by-sa) licenses versions 2.5, 2.0, and 1.0.