Fire-damaged Olympia to be reforested

ATHENS (AFP) — The Greek Olympic Committee said Wednesday it had accepted an offer from Israel for experts and 10,000 trees to help repair damage caused by fires on Olympia, the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games.

Greece's President Karolos Papoulias also accepted a proposal from the German city of Munich to reforest the Cronius hill above Olympia which was sacred to ancient Greeks.

Singed by a 12-day fire inferno that killed 65 people around the country, Olympia needs to spruce up ahead of the lighting ceremony of the Olympic flame for the 2008 Games in Beijing.

"(There is) an international effort to restore beauty to the landscape of ancient Olympia ahead of the lighting ceremony in March," the Olympic committee said.

The blaze burned trees behind the Olympia archaeological museum and grass on the slopes of the ancient stadium where thousands attend the lighting ceremony of the torch for the Summer and Winter Games.

Extensive damage was also caused to the Olympic Academy grove where the heart of Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympics, is buried.

Olympia is a UNESCO world heritage site and the birthplace of the ancient Olympic Games, first recorded to have been held here in 776 BC until 393 AD.

The local archaeological site still contains the remains of the stadium, temples, administrative buildings and training halls.

Signifying the spiritual moment of the Games' launch, the Olympic flame has been an integral part of the competition since 1928, and the ceremony conducted every two years in Olympia by young women dressed as ancient Greek priestesses is an eagerly-anticipated element of every Olympics.

After battling to extinguish the worst wildfires on record, Greek officials are battling to light a new fire, the Olympic flame that will be carried from the birthplace of the ancient games to Beijing for next year’s Olympics.

Fires under control except Mount Parnon

ATHENS (AFP) — A fire raged in Mount Parnon near the Greek town of Sparta for a ninth day Sunday but other blazes in the devastated Mediterranean country were under control, the fire services said.

Four water-bombing planes and a helicopter were deployed early Sunday to battle the blames around Mount Parnon but no villages were threatened, a spokesman for the fire service said.

"This day will be difficult again because we expect strong winds in the country's west, including the Peloponnese," he said but underlined that temperatures were expected to be lower in the Athens region.

The Peloponnese inferno started on August 24 in the wake of a heatwave, the third to hit Greece since the beginning of the summer. The fires have claimed at least 63 lives and destroyed 200,000 hectares (494,000 acres) of forests and farmland.

Greece was plunged into a national disaster as villages were consumed by flames that moved faster than a car and people were burned to death as they attempted to escape.

Two other planes and three helicopters were meanwhile dispatched Sunday to fight fires in the ancient town of Megalopolis and Karytaina in the central region of Arcadia and nearby Messenia, he said.

The official said three other fires which broke out nine days ago in the island of Eubee were still burning but under "partial control."

Two other blazes in Ionnina and Kilkis had been contained but a new one that broke out on Saturday in the northern prefecture of Imathia would be put under control later in the day, he added.

Greek Fires Destroy Olive Trees, Cutting Olive Oil Production

By Marianne Stigset

Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Greece's worst forest fires in history may have destroyed as many as 5 million olive trees, cutting production in the world's third-largest olive oil supplier and threatening to reduce output for years, an industry group said.

As much as 5 percent of this year's harvest may be lost, according to the group, Sevitel. A week of fires has killed at least 63 people and ravaged about 250,000 acres (101,200 hectares) of forest and farmland, Greenpeace Greece estimated. The Peloponnese peninsula, which generates 30 percent to 40 percent of the country's 9 billion-euro ($12.3 billion) olive oil market, is the worst affected.

The damage may reduce output to 285,000 metric tons and will devastate the economies of Peloponnese villages, which on average get as much as 60 percent of their income from olive farming, according to Sevitel, an association of producers and processors. Olive trees, which were cultivated by the Minoans of ancient Crete in 3500 B.C., can take 15 years to reach optimal production, the organization said.

``It's the first time in the history of this country that we have such an environmental disaster,'' Nikos Charalambides, director of Greenpeace Greece, said in a phone interview from Athens yesterday. ``Hundreds of people have lost their farmland, their animals. The olive trees will need years to grow.''

It may take a decade for people living off olive farming in the stricken areas to get their earnings back to prior levels, Gregory Antoniadis, the president of Sevitel and spokesman for Elais-Unilever SA, a Greek olive oil exporter, said from Athens.

Homes, Jobs

At least 2,500 people have been left homeless by the fires, which may lead to labor shortages and loss of expertise in the industry, Charalambides said.

More than 250 blazes have spread across central and southern Greece since Aug. 24, requiring the biggest firefighting operation in Europe since World War II. Early estimates set the cost of damage to farmland at 1.5 billion euros, Greek newspaper Express reported this week, citing unidentified government officials. Greece has experienced more wildfires this month than any European country in the past decade, according to the European Space Agency.

Greece, the largest olive oil producer after Spain and Italy, accounts for 13 percent of the global market, according to Rabobank Groep, the world's biggest farm lender. The country produces on average 300,000 tons a year, Antoniadis said. A 5 percent output cut would represent a loss of about 45 million euros, at current prices.

Spain Key

The drop in Greek production is unlikely to affect prices because of rising output in Spain and Italy this year, Rabobank said.

``What's really important is what happens in Spain, the world's top producer,'' Vito Martielli, a food and agribusiness analyst with Rabobank, said by phone from Utrecht, the Netherlands, on Aug. 29. ``Olives have a biannual production cycle and this year, production in Italy and Spain will be very high.''

Production increases in Spain and Italy would more than offset any decline in Greece, helping lift global output potentially by as much as 7.1 percent to about 3 million tons in the next season, which runs from November to March, Martielli said. That would be the highest since 2003-2004, he said.

Prices have dropped about 25 percent to 3 euros a kilogram since 2005-2006, when frost hit the main producing countries, according to Martielli.

Spain produced an estimated 1.1 million tons this season, 39 percent of the market, followed by Italy, which produced 630,000 tons, according to Rabobank. Greece produced 370,000 tons, more than half of which was exported to Italy, the world's biggest consumer.

To contact the reporter on this story: Marianne Stigset in London at mstigset@bloomberg.net

Greek Fires Start to Subside

ATHENS, Greece, August 29, 2007 (ENS) - Firefighters are beginning to gain ground against the worst forest fires to strike Greece in more than a century, but only after the blazes claimed 64 lives and charred much of Ilia prefecture on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece.

The country remains in the state of emergency and suspicion is rife that arsonists are to blame for more than half of the wildfires. To date, seven people have been arrested and charged with arson, including one person who is accused of setting fires at Zacharo, a village in Ilia where 37 people perished last week trying to escape the flames.

Two new wildfires broke out in northwest Ioannina prefecture today, and some large fires are still burning, but many others have been doused by firefighters and aircraft from across Europe. Greek firefighters are getting reinforcements of about 120 men from Cyprus, France and Israel.

Wednesday, Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis expressed the gratitude of all Greeks to the firefighters and called them heroes.

Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis promises cash to fire victims. (Photo courtesy Office of the Prime Minister)

Quick cash was made available to anyone who declared they had been harmed by the fire by Karamanlis' conservative government concerned about retaining power in elections slated for September 16.

The prime minister said emergency allocations of 3,000 euros (US$4,096) per affected household were to be made "without delay," upon only "a simple solemn statement of the beneficiary, with only one signature."

Greeks have suffered enough, he said, without being made to suffer more by bureaucratic processes.

Banks are offering debt forgiveness for those who have lost close relatives or suffered major losses of property. Credit card and loan payments are being deferred for borrowers in fire-ravaged areas.

Main opposition leader George Papandreou, visited Zacharo on Saturday, but refrained from criticizing the government. His party, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement, suspended its weekend campaigning and pledged 30 percent of the party's election funds to people hurt by the wildfires in the Peloponnese.

Wildfires have plagued Greece since July, but since Thursday at least 190 fires broke out across southern Greece, and also near Athens, Sparta and other cities. Fire singed the edges of ancient Olympia, site of the first Olympic games, but was stopped before the ancient monuments were destroyed.

Firefighters are still battling blazes across southern Greece and on Evia island, off eastern continental Greece, and fire officials fear the rekindling of wildfires where they already have been doused.

Some villages on the Peloponnese peninsula are still being evacuated today. Homes in more than 100 villages were destroyed and many families lost livestock and olive trees. Damages are estimated in the billions of euros.

Silent demonstrators outside the Greek Parliament building in Athens. August 29, 2007 (Photo by Constantin)

In Athens, thousands of people gathered outside the parliament buildings in protest of the government's slow and inadequate response to the fires. They expressed resentment at the "false statements of Karamanlis" from this past March that supposedly Greece was ready to face fires expected in the summer, while the government allocated only "minimal means" to fight them.

Weather conditions, including record summer temperatures and hot dry winds, have made Greece and southern Italy a tinderbox, said the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.

Greece has experienced more wildfire activity this August than other European countries have over the last decade, according to data from sensors aboard European Space Agency satellites.

Working like thermometers in the sky, the sensors measure thermal infrared radiation to take the temperature of Earth's land surfaces. Data from July 1996 to August 28, 2007 were used to plot the number of fires occurring monthly. Results show Greece has had four times the number of fires this August as were burning in August 1998.

Burned over land at Zacharo, where 37 people died trying to flee last week. (Photo credit unknown)

The data from these sensors is compiled to create the ATSR World Fire Atlas, which provides data to online users approximately six hours after acquisition. All available satellite passes are processed for the atlas.

In addition to maps, the time, date, longitude and latitude of the hot spots are provided. The data are meant to be used for research and especially for fire prevention and management.

But a report today in the "Economist" says Greek forestry officials were hampered by "lack of access to satellite pictures that could have enabled fire-fighters to find and douse blazes before they caused serious damage."

In 2000, the European Space Agency and the French space agency formed the International Charter Space and Major Disasters, which rapidly creates tasks for earth observation satellites and delivers the resulting spacemaps to emergency response and civil protection authorities anywhere in the world.

Finally today, the Hellenic national mapping and survey agency, part of the Ministry of Environment, Physical Planning and Public Works, requested spacemaps of the Greek fires from the International Charter.

Information gathered from:
http://www.ens-newswire.com...

Fires in Greece Pictures 2007

UPDATE:
Wednesday October 10th, 2007


Residents trying to extinguish a burning house in the village of Smerna. Some of the raging fires, spread by dry winds, have been blamed on arsonists. In Areopolis, a town in the southern Peloponnese, a 65-year-old man was arrested and charged with arson and multiple counts of homicide in a fire that killed six people.

The winged statue of victory stands in front of smoke from fires in the village of ancient Olympia, near the birthplace of the Olympic games, in south-west Greece. A huge effort by firefighters, water-dropping aircraft and fire trucks succeeded in keeping a raging blaze away from the 2,800-year-old site - the holiest sanctuary in ancient Greece

Fire approaches houses at the village of Kalyvia, south of Athens

Men using a tractor try to extinguish a fire near ancient Olympia

A helicopter drops water in the forest over the Pelopio village near ancient Olympia

A man leaves the burning village near ancient Olympia

UPDATE:
Wednesday September 19th, 2007

2 / 10

Greek soldiers evacuate an old man from a village near ancient Olympia

UPDATE:
Wednesday September 5th, 2007

mountains over ancient Olympia

Firefighters saved the temples and stadiums of ancient Olympia, birthplace of the Olympic Games, from forest fires that razed nearby villages and claimed the life of 60 people.

Building on forest land is forbidden in Greece, but unscrupulous developers are blamed for setting the fires in an effort to circumvent the law by disputing the area’s status. Greece has no land registry, so once a region has been burned and cleared, there is no definitive proof of whether it was initially forest, farm or field.

Tuesday September 4th, 2007

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Many parts of Greece have been struggling to cope with devastating fires that have killed more than 50 people.

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Farmers have seen their crops - and livelihoods - burning ferociously.

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Fires are affecting the capital, Athens, too. This picture of the Athens sky was sent to the BBC by Ava Babili.

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Konstantinos Topalidis also took pictures in the Greek capital. "It feels like snowing ashes and it is quite smoky," he says.

Monday September 3nd, 2007

BBC News website readers have sent in their photos of the fires in Greece. This one, from Aris Vidalis, shows how Athens looked on Saturday.

Dimitris Koukoulakis sent this photo from the village of Kalamos, north of Athens, overlooking the fires at Evia. Later the view disappeared as the smoke got thicker

"On Sunday we went to the sea for a swim. The sea was a different colour because of the countless pieces of coal and ash in it," said Mr Koukoulakis.

Moses Altsech, who sent this photo of fires in an affluent suburb of Athens, says that the government was not well prepared for the disaster.

"I went to the roof of my house to take pictures of the smoke in the sky. Everything was covered in ash," said Nassis Sarris, who took this picture.

Spyros Papanastasiou was observing a fire spreading quickly on one side of the road, when he noticed that another one started in the opposite direction."

"I was on the way to Gythio which is near Areopolis and I was standing beside the road just outside Oitilo," said Constantinos Vergos, who took this photo.

The sun set beneath a wall of smoke from the many fires around Athens. (Photo: Philip M Evans)

UPDATE:
Sunday September 2nd, 2007


The fires have covered Athens in white ash, forced thousands to flee their villages...


... and burned about 500 homes



But there will be enormous relief that the fires have not engulfed the Olympic museum, housing a number of famous classical sculptures such as Hermes by Praxiteles and other finds from the ruins of the temples and sports facilities.



Fire brigades evacuated hundreds of villages on the southern Peloponnese peninsula


Fires clearly visible from space

Firefighters managed to save the site of ancient Olympia - birthplace of the Olympics

Several EU countries have sent their own firefighers and equipment to help battle the country's worst forest fires in decades.


Firefighters are continuing to battle forest fires raging across southern Greece

In Athens, too, major fires encroached on the city, and aircraft were called in to help dampen the flames.

Fire services were stretched to the limit. Helicopters tried to douse the flames in the Peloponnese region, but high winds hampered the use of planes.

Dozens of people were caught up in the advancing flames, in their homes, or as they tried to flee in cars or on foot.

At dawn near Zaharo, in western Greece, forest fires continued to burn ferociously after a prolonged heatwave and drought. The daylight would bring horror to the town.

Smoke rose behind a beach last week on the Peloponnesian peninsula in Greece. With a barrage of deadly fires mostly extinguished or contained, tourists are returning.



A Canadair firefighting airplane sprays water over a fire in the village of Kyparissia on the Peloponnese peninsula. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso pledged EU support for Greece here Saturday as firefighters tackled the remains of an eight-day inferno that has killed at least 63 people

This picture released by the Greek Prime Minister's Office shows Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis(R) bidding farewell to President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso after their meeting in Athens. Barroso pledged EU support for Greece here Saturday as firefighters tackled the remains of an eight-day inferno that has killed at least 63 people

Firefighters battle blaze on the outskirts of Karytena on the Peloponnese peninsula. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso pledged EU support for Greece here Saturday as firefighters tackled the remains of an eight-day inferno that has killed at least 63 people.

Firefighters battle blaze on the outskirts of Karytena on the Peloponnese peninsula, 01 September. A fire raged in Mount Parnon near the Greek town of Sparta for a ninth day Sunday but other blazes in the devastated Mediterranean country were under control, the fire services said.

Planes douse a blaze on the outskirts of Karytena on the Peloponnese peninsula, 01 September. A fire raged in Mount Parnon near the Greek town of Sparta for a ninth day Sunday but other blazes in the devastated Mediterranean country were under control, the fire services said.

Smoke and flames from a forest fire are seen behind the houses of a village in south Peloponnese, about 350 km (217 miles) from Athens, August 26, 2007. Weak zoning laws, careless farmers and smoldering garbage dumps are the main reasons for the forest fires that have killed 63 and destroyed whole rural economies in Greece in recent days, Greenpeace said on Monday.

A wreath sits on a burnt firefighting truck outside the village of Artemida on the Peloponnese peninsula. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso headed to Athens to "show solidarity" with Greeks traumatised by forest fires which have killed scores of people and surged once again on Friday

A Greek Red Cross member walks next to the burnt car of Artemida's village mayor at Peloponnese peninsula. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso headed to Athens to "show solidarity" with Greeks traumatised by forest fires which have killed scores of people and surged once again on Friday.