ATHENS (AFP) – At least one person has died in eastern Greece after torrential rains hit the country, already ravaged for weeks by devastating wildfires, authorities said yesterday.
However, officials said firefighters had brought under control the blaze burning for weeks in Dadia national park. The victim of the rains appeared to have been carried away by flood waters, while a shepherd was reported missing, government spokesman Yannis Artopios told public broadcaster ERT.
“Storms and heavy rains were hitting on Tuesday,” said Artopios, adding the dead man was found in central Greece’s Magnesia region.
The regional capital Volos has seen 200 millimetres (mm) of rain, while 516mm have fallen in the neighbouring village of Zagora, according to the National Meteorological Service (EMY).
The basement of Volos hospital was flooded and firefighters “are in the process of pumping out the water”, said Artopios.
Since Monday, EMY has warned of serious bad weather which could affect the country until tomorrow, with “authorities on high alert”, according to the government.
On Monday evening, storms also caused landslides in Evia, an island close to Athens, while crops were damaged in Elis in the southwest Peloponnese region, according to local media.
Greece has been devastated by ferocious wildfires this summer.
A massive blaze raging over the last two weeks destroyed swathes of the Dadia national park in the northern Evros region.
Artopios told AFP that the Dadia fire front, raging since August 19, was “under control and no area was active”.
“Firefighters are staying in position to survey the situation,” he added.
Classified by experts as a “megafire”, the blaze raging in Dadia destroyed more than 81,000 hectares of the forested area, protected by the European agency Natura 2000.
The devastation in Dadia accounts for almost half the total area burned by wildfires in Greece since the start of the summer, according to the European climate service Copernicus.
