By Anders Lorenzen

The Prime Minister of Greece has warned his country, which has already battled a series of wildfires this summer – with drought being a key contributing factor, that the worst could still be to come.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis earlier this month expressed worry and concern about the months ahead. He said that his country faced a dangerous summer of wildfires, as a persistent prolonged drought combined with strong winds presented perfect wildfire conditions.

While wildfires are commonplace across the Mediterranean country, climate-induced impacts such as hotter, drier and windier weather has seen an increase in wildfires across the region.

Early July, dozens of fires broke out including two situated close to the capital, Athens.

A difficult June

Addressing his cabinet, PM Mitsotakis said: “It is a summer which is expected to be particularly dangerous … The most difficult times are still ahead of us.”  He added that June was a particularly bad month for the country, which is hugely reliant on tourism: “We had a very difficult June in terms of weather conditions with high drought and unusually high gusts of wind for the season.” 

The prime minister explained that damage could have been a lot worse, had it not been for the response of the emergency services and the use of drones to survey forest land. Less than 100,000 square metres of land had been burned in the two fires and thus damage had been limited.  

Ahead of this summer season, Greece has scaled up its preparations by hiring more emergency staff and increasing training. The destructive forest fires last year forced 19,000 people to flee the island of Rhodes and killed 20 in the north of the country.

The Mediterranean country has also scaled up the use of technology, such as drones and data transmitters so that blazes can be detected early. The country also plans to increase the number of its unmanned aircraft to 35, as well as increasing the number of trained drone operators from 104 to 139.