Villagers who fought the flames on tractors
It would be doing the people of Kefalas, outside Sparta in the foothills of Mt Parnonas, an injustice to say they were lucky that their village was saved from the fires – because their good fortune had nothing to do with luck. It was rather due to their mentality, their foresight, vigilance, solidarity and care. A previous wildfire in 1998 taught them what had to be done. They did not wait for the state to come and save them, nor some television reporter to mediate so that firefighters would drop from the sky. On their own, they converted their tractors into fire trucks. On their own, they fought the flames – and won. «What the experience of firefighting has taught me,» said Nikos Karlas, «is that if you don’t do something yourself, nothing can be done. Only we know our villages, only we feel for them, only we can save them.» Kefalas is a 15-minute drive from Sparta, but it seems far removed from the disaster area, though it is at an altitude of 400 meters in the foothills of Mt Parnonas, in the heart of the fire-ravaged area. Yet its inhabitants, acting completely on their own, managed to save not only their entire village, but other settlements closeby. They were able to do so because, firstly, they quickly reached a decision to stay and fight and, secondly, because they were prepared – they had supplied themselves with firefighting equipment. «Do you see our tractors? They go anywhere. We use them to spray the trees with water. We have added pumps to them and they can be fitted with a hose so we can use them as fire trucks. And we have 30 of them. No fire can stop us,» said Thanassis Maltezos, a father of two. «Don’t think it was easy,» added Fanis Vlacholias. «The wind was blowing from all directions. If everywhere else they had converted tractors into fire trucks, there would have been minimal damage. There are thousands of these vehicles in the Peloponnese. You can’t expect much from a seasonal fireman, a young kid on a daily wage who is afraid to come out of Sparta. Why should he risk his life?» Today the sunlight reflects off the silver leaves of the olive trees that are spread over 600 hectares around the settlement. Local residents are standing guard in shifts up at the little church on the hill. Anything suspicious is quickly noticed. The rest of the population, down in the village, is on standby. Back in 1995, the villagers’ income was solely based, as it still is, on olive cultivation. The generation that is now 30-35 years old decided to take advantage of subsidies for young farmers and stay in the village, setting up organic farms, and to seek inclusion in European Union programs that were just beginning. Seventeen years ago, they set up the organic olive groves that today produce the «Therapne» olive oil brand and other olive products. According to Fanis Vlacholias, who is CEO of Sparti-Kefalas SA, they also decided to bypass the bureaucracy required for a cooperative and partisan «complications» and set up a modern firm aimed at providing profits for all involved in it. «We simply call it a ‘group,’ but the group is a firm that acts on the basis of commercial profit. The firm’s administration, just five people, decides. That’s it,» he said. «And it isn’t just the four or five of us,» he added. «There are a lot of us, but yesterday most went out to celebrate saving the village and they are still asleep – but don’t write that,» joked Nikos Karlas. «What the experience of the fires taught us is that if you don’t put your own effort into something, you can’t achieve anything. We are the only ones who know our fields, we are the only ones that feel for them and can save them. We only expect financial aid from the municipality, to help us get bigger better tractors so that next time we will be even more effective.» The village has about 350 inhabitants who view Kefalas as a suburb of Sparta. «I stayed here because it offers me a better quality of life. This is where my friends are and whenever we want to, we take a trip to Sparta or Athens. We never stop. Now we want to make new labels, new products. We have received a subsidy to build a new model olive press and packaging plant. We have incentives to live and work here,» said Vlacholias. «Now we are going to help the rest, those who lost everything in the fires,» said Spyros Kyriakoulias, another firefighter in the «group.» «Just yesterday we were fighting a fire at the Aghoi Anargyroi Monastery. The forest is still burning. We too breathe the air from that forest. That’s where we should be turning our attention.» This article first appeared in Kathimerini’s Sunday supplement K on September 9.
