'Not an excuse': As wildfires rage, Greek PM says must tackle climate change
Smoke rises from a wildfire on Corfu Island, Greece.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday (July 27) said that the country needed to take more steps to fight the effects of climate change. Wildfires are raging in the central part of the country forcing more evacuations after burning farms and factories overnight.
The blazing fires are stoked more by strong winds and temperatures crossing 40 degrees Celsius mark. Two more deaths were recorded in central Greece on Wednesday. This has taken the death toll from the fires to five.
Officials have been ordering evacuations of several communities since Wednesday in the hard-hit area of of Magnesia. It is a coastal area north of Athens.
More people were forced to evacuate on Thursday, some via private speed boats, and head to the nearby port city of Volos, as flames rekindled.
Powerful explosions were heard from an ammunition depot in the coastal town of Nea Aghialos, Greek state television ERT reported.
ERT cited unnamed sources to say that the ammunition depot belonged to the Greek air forces.
"There were dozens of blasts which caused glass windows to shatter, people got panic," the mayor of the nearby port city of Volos, the regional capital, Achilleas Beos told Open television.
Ioannis Artopoios, spokesperson of Greek fire brigade said that firefighters made a "superhuman effort" but could not tame the fires in the wider area of Volos and in Aghialos.
The fire brigade said 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 said Greece needed to reform its fire fighting and fire prevention policies and do more to alleviate the impact of climate change.
"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," he said.
(With inputs from agencies)
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