Athens official attributes forest fires to lack of criminal preparation

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The official tasked with protecting the Greek capital from the effects of rising temperatures criticized the “criminal lack of preparation” of world political leaders as the Mediterranean region suffers one of the hottest summers on record.

Eleni Myrivili, Athens heat manager, said the fires that had reached the outskirts of the city and devastated more than 120,000 hectares of the Aegean nation were just a taste of what was to come.

“This is.. The start of irreversible devastation, devastation of ecosystems and livelihoods, due to climate change and the criminal lack of preparedness for the extreme heat,” she said in an interview with the Financial Times.

“Greece, as well as the rest of the world, had better develop serious resistance to the rapid heat because this summer is just the beginning.”

The entire Mediterranean region battled waves of devastating forest fires this summer, from Turkey to France, including Italy and Spain, as well as North Africa.

Experts say record heat waves exacerbated by climate change are the main reason, although several people have also been arrested on suspicion of arson in connection with the fires in Greece. The hottest temperature on record for Europe, 48.8 ° C, was recorded in Sicily last week.

Athens is one of a small group of cities that have appointed a dedicated heat official to provide a focal point for the response to rising temperatures, with Miami-Dade County in the United States and Freetown, the capital of the Sierra Leone.

Uncontrollable fire in Drosopigi, Varybobi, a north-eastern suburb of Athens © Yannis Kolesidis / EPA / Shutterstock Burned cars and a house after a fire in northern Athens © Milos Bicanski / Getty

Myrivili is city councilor and resilience manager for Athens, as well as interim heat manager, preparing Europe’s hottest capital for the most frequent heat waves.

Fires have been burning on the outskirts of Athens, a city of nearly 4 million inhabitants, for several weeks, and continue to threaten the capital on Wednesday. Severe forest fires have also destroyed property and livelihoods in Evia, Greece’s second largest island.

While extreme heat was the biggest threat accompanying climate change, “there is very little preparation. . . no one has prepared cities for global warming, ”Myrivili said.

At the same time, the scale of the fires this summer gave policymakers the opportunity to react. “If it hadn’t been for the fires, we wouldn’t have things the media could report on,” she said, noting that other effects, such as deaths related to the heat, were less visible and often more prolonged.

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“Heat waves need to be more specific in people’s minds – they are not visible,” she said.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Greek Prime Minister, has authorized a € 500million relief plan, after initially having to apologize for delays in firefighting efforts. He also appointed a new minister responsible for disaster recovery.

In an interview with CNN last weekend, he described the fires in Greece as “a wake-up call” to radically change power generation, construction, agriculture and transportation. “It has to happen and we have to start now,” he said.

More than 970 cities around the world will experience average summer highs of 35C by 2050, according to the C40 Coalition of Cities of the World. That compares to just over a third of that number today. The number of the world’s population exposed to such temperatures is also expected to reach 1.6 billion, a jump of 800%.

“We are in a crisis, we have seen it this summer, and people are suffering,” Myrivili said. “We have to make sure we protect the most vulnerable. It is always the most vulnerable who have to face it.

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