Greece Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said that the country needed to take more steps to combat the effects of climate change as wildfires on the mainland burned farms and factories overnight and left farmers rushing to evacuate their animals.
An additional two people people were killed in central Greece on Wednesday, taking the death toll from the blazes across the country, which have been supercharged by strong winds and temperatures exceeding 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) to five.
The country’s fire brigade said that more than 500 wildfires have burned across the country so far this year. While summer fires are common in Greece, scientists say higher temperatures and dryer weather are turning it into a Mediterranean hotspot for climate change.
Mitsotakis was quoted as saying that Greece needed to reform its fire fighting and fire prevention policies and do more to alleviate the impact of climate change.
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“The climate crisis may be a reality, but it cannot be an excuse,” he said during a meeting with President Katerina Sakellaropoulou. “Our country ought to take more steps… to be ready to mitigate, as much as possible, the effects of a reality that we are already starting to feel, and that could have dramatic effects on many different aspects of our economic and social life,”.
Since Wednesday, officials have ordered the evacuation of several communities in the hard-hit area of Magnesia, a coastal area north of Athens. The body of a 45-year-old shepherd was found in a rural area on Wednesday evening, the fire brigade said. Earlier, authorities had found the body of a woman, state TV ERT said. Both deaths were attributed to the fires.
The fire brigade also said that 74 firefighters were injured, or suffered heat stroke, while battling the blazes over the past 10 days.
“On Thursday, the risk of a fire is extreme in several areas. We remain in a state of alert,” fire brigade spokesperson Ioannis Atropios said.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
