RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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“Unbelievable” winds have fuelled the fires now spreading across pockets of Greece, after devastating parts of France and Spain.
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Three firefighters have been killed while battling out-of-control wildfires on Crete and in mainland Greece.
More than 220 firefighters have been deployed, as well as 11 specialised forest units on foot and 53 fire engines, along with volunteers to tackle the inferno - made worse by gale-force winds, droughts and heat.
In Crete, two firefighters died while after becoming trapped between two fire fronts in the region of Rethymno, in the island's west on Wednesday.
A third firefighter was found unconscious near the southern Peloponnese port town of Gytheio and was later pronounced dead.
They “fell heroically in the line of duty, safeguarding the lives and property of citizens as well as the natural environment," a statement from the fire department said.
“The wind is unbelievable – you can't stand sometimes,” Krya Vrysi resident Chrissa Gioukaki recalled the disaster. “The flames were huge, it was really scary.”
Dozens of rural and forest fires have broke out across Greece within 24 hours as powerful winds continue to put a strain on operations on the ground.
The most challenging fronts were in southern Crete and in Plomari on Lesbos, in the northern Aegean.
The Greek emergency service 112 sent out 16 “activation” emergency alerts, warning the public about the immediate threat.
Agia Galini, in Crete - a popular area for tourists - is one of the villages being evacuated , while the hotel sector in all of Rethymno has been placed on heightened alert.
Michalis Christoforakis, a hotelier in the coastal village, said the fire was not visible from the settlement when the 112 alert rang out.
He told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency that there was no panic and that tourists and residents were following the instructions, which directed them towards the town of Tympaki.
Greece is the latest country to have fallen victim of the wildfires that have devastated pockets of Europe .
Neighbouring Turkey is also struggling to grapple with the multiple forest blazes in four of its western provinces.
Residents in Mugla and parts of Antalya, known for some of the country’s most popular holiday resorts, were evacuated as teams with firefighting planes and helicopters were deployed.
In France, the monster blazes destroyed an area four times the size of Paris and forced more than 220,000 people to abandon their homes and flee since last week.
The Independent’s reporter James C. Reynolds arrived in the commune of Lacanau, just over 50km away from Bordeaux, as an estimated 4,000 people were ordered to evacuate campsites on Wednesday afternoon.
Dozens of volunteers, some as young as 18, were working around the clock to guide firefighters, feed the displaced and to put out fires.
Rainfall, lower temperatures and humidity finally brought some respite to the city of Bordeaux in the early hours of Thursday morning.
French authorities gave the go-ahead for 84,000 evacuees to finally return to their homes in the southwest, the strongest sign yet that firefighters are turning a corner in their fight.
Raphael Fohanno, 18, could not believe what had happened to his parents' house in the beach town of Biscarrosse.
"It’s a shock, thinking that just an hour earlier I had been in my room and everything and now, there’s nothing left,” said the teenager said, whose parents and sister had been evacuated by helicopter while he was out of the house.
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