IHT : Greeks battle to save homes from fire

Greeks battle to save homes from fire

By Ian Fisher and Anthee Carassava | August 27, 2007

MAKISTOS, Greece: When the water ran out, with pinecones popping and the flames still high around his house, George Dimopoulos switched to wine. He made it himself two years ago, and, nearly alone in his village as it all but burned down Friday night, he poured liter after liter, 200 in all, into his little copper hand-pumped crop sprayer - and sprayed and sprayed.

"I had nothing else," said Dimopoulos, 63.

His wine helped save his life, his house and possibly his neighborhood. But it was an exception in this village and the one next door, Artemida, an area where the death toll from Greece's worst fires in more than a century accounted for nearly half the 63 people now reported to have been killed.

Most of them died on the run. An elderly brother and sister, unmarried and living together, fled with their only donkey and would not leave it. A convoy trying to outrace the flames snarled into a crash, in a fire so hot it liquefied metal and bubbled windshields like grilled cheese. At least 23 people died trying to escape. Medical workers found, in a nearby olive grove fanned over by fire, four children shielded by their mother's body.

These are stories Europe is no longer used to hearing about itself, believing that in the developed world problems like forest fires can be solved. And though southern Europe has been hit with drought this year and high winds spread the flames faster than cars could drive, the government of Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis, heading for elections next month, is facing a crisis over whether it was up to the task of handling the crisis.

A very angry Dimopoulos thinks not, though fire officials began Monday to speak with optimism that, at a minimum, the fires were spreading less rapidly. With houses toppled and scorched all around his, he strapped his crop sprayer to his back again on Monday and began a lesson on how to put out fires.

"Bring Karamanlis here and I will take him by the hair and show him how I did it!" he roared, squirting a bit of water, now available again, on his wood pile.

The government, seeking to deflect criticism, has blamed arson, reportedly arresting seven people for setting various fires, which have flared around the nation, most here on the Peloponnesian peninsula and on Evia island north of Athens. Adding to conspiracy theories blasted over an alarmist Greek media - including the possibility that the fires were started as a hostile act from abroad - a Greek prosecutor Monday ordered an investigation over whether the fires might be prosecuted under the nation's anti-terrorism laws.

Meanwhile, the nation's fire departments and the army continued an all-out effort, aided by other European firefighters and aircraft along with scores of citizen brigades, to get the fires under control. For the first time since the blazes erupted Friday, some progress was reported: While 44 out-of-control fires were reported Sunday, the number dropped by 10 on Monday, aided by the second day of calm winds.

The danger has by no means passed. In the village of Grillos, just over a ridge from here on the western Peloponnesus, a couple that owns a restaurant watched in tears and worry as flames advanced from three directions. Fire trucks spewed water in the flames' path.

"All we need is one of those," said one owner, Iannis Drakopoulos, 72, as a Russian plane carrying a huge bucket of water passed overhead. "If he dropped here, it would all have been fine."

In Artemida and here in Makistos, the flames were already out, and Monday was instead a day for tallying the damage and preparing to bury the dead.

"What is there to say?" asked Efstathios Alexandropoulos in the hilltop cemetery in Artemida. With a small crew of helpers, he and a brother were laying the concrete blocks for a single crypt to hold his son, Phillipos, 6; a niece, Ioanna, also 6; and his mother, also named Ioanna.

Up the hill, workers were preparing the grave for Athanasia Karta-Paraskevopoulos, 35, a teacher born here but who lived in Athens, and the four children she shielded as the flames closed in on them: Angeliki, 15; Maria, 12; Anastassia, about 10; and Constantinos, 5. They had been on vacation.

White marble was being fitted across the cemetery for her brother, Harilaos Karta, 46, a policeman who also lived in Athens.

"Before you could say fire, it was here," Vassiliki Bammi, 62, a resident of Artemida, said in town's ruined square.

She was in the town when the fire hit, and all the descriptions from people who saw it were the same: of flames moving at an unimaginable rate, unexpected despite the winds, and no one apart from the police to help. Fires in the summer are not uncommon here, and there had been sporadic ones in the area. But no one seems to have thought they would suddenly rage out of control.

The fire reportedly came over a ridge first to Makistos, a village of just 60 homes. Antonios Kokkaliaris, an 80-year-old farmer, said he had been reading a newspaper, underline parts he liked, when he heard the bell in St. John's church ring.

"I went out and I saw the flames before me and people running," he said. He could not leave, he said, because his wife, Koula, 82, is severely disabled. He said he took her downstairs. "I told her, 'Stay put, we're going to fight this out.' I grabbed onto the hose and I started dousing, left, right and center."

The town emptied, with only he, a herdsman and Dimopoulos with his wine staying behind. He managed to douse his home, and two next door, well enough that the fires howled past, leaving his house intact. He described the experience as "horror, complete horror."

But when the danger passed, he did not feel relief.

"I was disappointed, honestly," he said. "Because not only was there no one to help me, there was no one in sight. 'Am I just standing here alone? What happened to all my townspeople? What is the purpose of life if I am all alone?' "

The fire quickly ripped into Artemida, about three kilometers, or two kilometers, away. Residents piled into cars down the road toward Zaharo, the area's main town, on the Aegean Sea. Alexandropoulos, at the time in Zaharo, said he heard that the flames reached his village and called his mother, who was taking care of his son, Phillipos.

"I didn't even speak with her," he said. "I just said, 'I'm coming. Get going.' "

"I just didn't make it," he said.

He could not, according to several accounts, because fire swept across the road to the village, blocking off cars. Karta-Paraskevopoulos, her car full of her children and possibly others, turned around along with another car. In the smoke and confusion, there was an accident with other fleeing cars and a fire truck, which rolled over. Everyone in the convoy, several of them elderly, fled up a slope into the olive groves, where they died.

"I thought of nothing - just death," said Vassilis Mitros, 28, among a party who saw the bodies - he counted 24 - early the next morning.

Now the once-lovely hills are burnt to white ash and olive trees like blackened skeletons, planted after death. All but 14 of the 60 homes here were damaged or destroyed; in Artemida, 17 of the 70 houses were lost, though Karta-Paraskevopoulos's house was intact. The region normally produces 10,000 tons of oil, but nearly all the trees are now destroyed, along with countless livelihoods. Charred donkeys and chickens litter ruined farms.

"This village is literally wiped out," Bammi said. "It's not just those who have been killed. Those who are left have no fields to work in, no olive trees. They have nothing to look forward to."

"The new children who grow up in this town will not know what an olive tree looks like," she said.

In late afternoon, Dimopoulos's wife, Maria, 56, decided to lay down a bunch of white daisies on the spot where her cousins, Nikos and Maria Dimopoulos, the brother and sister, both in their 70s, died.

The three of them had been fleeing the fire together when a police officer stopped and urged them to get into his car. Dimopoulos did, but the other two did not want to leave their donkey, their only possession of value.

"I told you, 'Come with me!' " she said, laying the flowers down next to the dead donkey on the side of the road. "You wouldn't come. Why wouldn't you come?"