In the villages at the foot of Parnes, a mountain range north of Athens, there is still a burning smell.
At the end of August, a fierce fire devoured more than 6,100 hectares of its forests, but also reached some houses, killed animals, and destroyed at least two restaurants. These same streets, where a few days ago neighbors became volunteer firefighters to try to save their belongings, were a stream on Wednesday caused by the historic storm Daniel.
While the center of Athens became chaos, with restaurant tables in the tourist Monastiraki Square swept away by water, in Parnes the nearby river overflowed due to the heavy rains that have devastated Greece this week. It had never rained so much in such a short time. All records have been broken. The storm has hit the center of the country, with the Thessaly plain – the only large plain in Greece – turned into an immense lake of some 70,000 flooded hectares. At least 10 people have died, millions of dollars in damage have been caused to agriculture, entire towns have been wiped out. No one remembers a similar phenomenon in the past. The water, although it did not cause this damage in Athens, also reached the capital, forcing the closure of metro stops, and Parnes, when it was still recovering from the flames. In the port of Piraeus, from where ferries depart to the main Aegean islands, flooding exceeded 40 centimeters. On other main avenues in the capital, pedestrians were run over by the floods.
“A few days ago there was fire. “Now we are removing water and mud from the kitchen,” explained Theodoros, 72, who was doing what he could with an excavator borrowed from a friend to remove mud from the entrance to his house. “The drain was blocked and the water reached up to 50 centimeters,” he said, pointing with his hand to the height where he covered it.
In Menidi, the main street is a walk of traditional taverns in a formerly idyllic location, considered the lungs of Athens. Parnes, a protected natural park, is the mountain where Athenians flock on weekends to breathe fresh air and escape the hustle and bustle of the city. It is home to more than 1,000 species of plants and animals. Now, the few that remain on the street sweep mud. On their phones they show videos of Daniel's ravages: the street was no longer a street, it was a river that carried away everything in its path. Not far away, some burned vehicles are still there, as if they wanted to be a reminder of the flames that devastated his mountain.
“It is a punishment from the gods. It's as if they wanted to punish us for something... or worse, for the world to end," laments Giota, a Tourism student who works at the Parnes refuge.
The road to reach it is complicated. The trees and the earth loosened after the fires have been added to the curves. The landscape is desolate. The pines are still black, and it will take at least ten years to recover them. “It's the worst thing that could have happened. You can rebuild the houses, but not the mountain”, exclaims Giota inside the shelter. It's still raining outside.
She also lives at the foot of the mountain. The fire was so close to her house that she had to pack her bags and escape with her mother. The men stayed, to protect her property and try to lend a hand to the firefighters. “It is very dangerous to walk around here now because the fire is so fresh that the earth is fragile, and with the floods... I was afraid that there would be people drowning,” she admits. Her boss, Yannis, had to leave quickly. As an expert mountaineer he was called upon to lend a hand to those trapped by the floods in central Greece. The roads were closed and the traffic ban was still in force, but not for emergency teams. More than 2,800 people have had to be evacuated so far.
“I think I've seen it all. First, the pandemic. Then, the fires. And now this. He had never imagined anything like this. Yesterday we had floods that came from the mountains and that seemed like something out of a movie. What else can happen to us? ”Yorgos asks himself, sitting in the patio of his house, which is also the last restaurant still standing before the mountain begins. A few meters further, the roads are charred. The flames, he says, were unbeatable, “more than 30 meters” high. When he saw them, he couldn't think of anything other than to grab the fire extinguisher and try to put them out. The firefighters forced them to get into the trucks and abandon everything. The restaurant across the street, used for ceremonies, is completely burned.
Greeks are furious about the natural disasters that are hitting their country in a fateful summer where they have seen it all: heat waves, droughts, fires and now floods. The Parnés fire is one of hundreds of forest fires that have broken out this summer, especially hot in the Mediterranean, and which have left 26 dead. The Evros fire, in the forests bordering Turkey, is already the largest fire recorded in Europe, with more than 90,000 hectares destroyed.
The government of Kiriakos Mitsotakis, the center-right prime minister who was re-elected with broad support in the June elections, blames climate change for all these extreme events, and has vowed that they will spare no effort to compensate those affected, who, only with the floods, for the professor of Natural Disaster Management at the University of Athens, Efthimios Lekkas, they could exceed one billion euros. But many citizens are angry and believe that the Executive should have done more. “There are many problems. And what does the Government do? Bla bla bla. They talk but they don't do anything,” criticizes Theodoros, in the mud at the door of his house. “I'm not an expert in fires but here there was only a plane throwing water. Can you explain to me how they were going to contain this fire with a single plane ”, protested Yorgos, who assumes that it will take months, if not years, for his restaurant to attract Greek and foreign tourists who came to Parnés again. Another neighbor, Maria, is tougher and assures that only the citizens were actively working to contain the flames, while the firefighters stood by and did nothing. “We are angry and disappointed. I don't know whose fault it is, but we can't continue like this. What is going to be next? My sister is stuck in Volos,” she says, about the first completely flooded city this week, the capital of the Magnesia region.
“It is a strong Government because it has just won two elections in a row – the elections were repeated because in the first ones they did not achieve an absolute majority –, but pressure from civil society and even the media, which generally gives support, is growing. to the center right. With the fires, and now with the floods, we are seeing many voices raised that we are not used to, who say that it is all chaos and that there have never been so many disasters in such a short time,” says investigative journalist Kostas Zafeiropoulos.
Yorgos puts his hands on his head. His mother nods slowly. “It's more than our houses,” he points out. They are our forests, our memories. I used to walk through these trees every day as a child, and now it's all destroyed. They say it will get worse every year. What are we going to do? We need help".
