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| A man prepared to spray water from a hose onto a hill burning near the Greek village of Kato Katilio on Wednesday. Petros Giannakouris/AP |
Greeks angry, confused over fires
Many locals say arsonists started the deadly fires that have swept the country in the past week.
from the August 31, 2007 edition
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Ordinary Greeks largely agree that a conspiracy is at work, but aren't sure who to blame. A poll conducted on behalf of a local television station and newspaper found that 67 percent of respondents believed the fires were part of an organized plan by arsonists. Of those, 31 percent blamed foreign forces and 26 percent thought land developers were responsible.
But less than half thought that Pasok would have handled the fires any better. More voters are undecided now than before the current crisis and the poll results indicated that support for both major parties had fallen, with smaller, third parties likely to receive a boost in the coming elections.
That view was on display Wednesday night, when thousands of people dressed in black packed Syntagma Square in Athens to express solidarity with victims and frustration with the state's handling of the crisis. The crowd booed at leftists who arrived with political slogans and at police, who responded with stun grenades.
"I'm angry, but I don't know how to direct it," says Thanássis Tótsikas, a young Athenian who lost a friend this week in a fire near the village of Areopolis. "I can't understand why they can't put the fires out." In the coming election, he says, he plans to vote for Citizen, a small leftist party.
Environmental mismanagement?
Environmental groups and forestry experts dismiss charges of conspiracy, saying instead that land policy, environmental management, and climate change lie at the root of the crisis. Dr. Paulo Barbosa, a researcher at EFFIS, points out that Greece isn't the only country that has suffered from massive forest fires this year. Last year, 865,000 acres of European forest burned. This year, 1,850,000 already have. What is different this year is the bone-dry conditions, caused by a summer-long drought and soaring temperatures.
Back in Kato Kotilio, where villagers stood guard through the night Wednesday against what officials said was the last major fire still burning in the Peloponnesus, this week's events were all too familiar. The village and surrounding area was burned in 2000, during Greece's last major spate of fires.
Polyxeni Patrona and her sister Ioulia lost everything then: their house, their livestock, their olive trees. Their replanted groves are just beginning to bear fruit again. They criticized the aid they received from the government, then under Pasok, saying it was too small, took years to arrive, and was too heavily taxed when it finally did.
The government has promised to be better this time and has already started distributing relief money. On Wednesday, the first day aid was distributed, the government said that 7,500 people received $33 million.
As helicopters roared overhead, store owner Paraskavas Karathanassis arrived with a truck load of water to help people protect their homes. He says he's helping because the government's response is disorganized. But the government shouldn't bear full responsibility, he says. "Global warming and agriculture have dried out the land here. "The land itself is to blame."
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