Fourlas quits as fire plan redrawn
The head of the Civil Protection Agency, Panayiotis Fourlas, tendered his resignation yesterday after the government started making plans for an overhaul of the firefighting and emergency services. Fourlas, 59, resigned, citing personal reasons, after serving as director of the agency for three years. He had previously served as head of the fire service between 2000 and 2004. Fourlas was heavily criticized for the handling of this summer’s forest fires but sources said that talk of the government putting together a new crisis management department to oversee incidents such as natural disasters was also a key reason behind his decision. «He got the message and made his final decision,» a government source told Kathimerini. Fourlas’s resignation follows Sunday’s re-election victory by the conservative party and the government’s decision to merge the Public Order Ministry – in charge of police and firefighting – with the Interior Ministry. «The Secretariat for Civil Protection, as shown by not only the facts in Greece but also in the rest of Europe, needs to be developed in combination with broader attempts made by the European Union for the creation of a single civil protection body, especially for Southern Europe,» said Interior Minster Prokopis Pavlopoulos, who was appointed to head the combined ministries on Monday. Fourlas agreed to stay on until his replacement has been appointed.
