When firefighters arrived at a blaze in a pine forest on the Greek island of Rhodes last July, flames were already leaping above the trees into the night sky. The volunteers needed to act fast, but dense vegetation on the forest floor blocked access.
In the wake of the public outcry sparked by the lenient sentencing of those defendants found guilty in the trial over the state apparatus’ handling of the deadly Mati fire in 2018, the Supreme Court prosecutor has instructed the head of the Athens Appeals Prosecutor’s Office to scrutinize the decision.
Skimming over miles of hills blackened by wildfires west of Athens, Fire Lt. Col. Ioannis Kolovos readies his elite fire crew crouched inside a helicopter.
The National Security Governmental Council (KYSEA), Greece’s top decision-making body on foreign affairs and defense matters, discussed the conflict in the Middle East, migration and this year’s fire fighting plan at an emergency meeting on Wednesday.
Prosecutor Georgia Adelini of the Supreme Court instructed the Prosecutor of the Athens Appeals Court to explore the possibility of appealing the court’s decision on the Mati wildfire case.
The first round of the judicial investigation into the tragedy at Mati in eastern Attica in 2018 concluded on Monday with the court finding only five former high-ranking officials of the state apparatus guilty, mainly from the Fire Service, while acquitting those responsible for Civil Protection and local government officials, in a decision denounced as too lenient by victims’ relatives and public opinion.
The President of the Supreme Court, Ioanna Klapa Christodoulea, seeks swift processing of Monday’s ruling by the Athens Three-Member Misdemeanor Court concerning the 2018 Mati wildfires, which claimed 104 lives and left many injured, to prevent potential criminal offenses from expiring.
In the past twenty-four hours, a total of 49 agricultural and forest fires were reported across the country.
A fire broke out Monday in a rural area of the northern Peloponnesian region of Neos Erineos.
A man was convicted of involuntary arson on Monday for his role in Greece’s deadliest wildfire in memory, and five former fire officials found guilty of misdemeanours linked to their response to the 2018 blaze, judicial sources said.
A court in Athens convicted five former senior firefighting and disaster response officials on Monday, over a 2018 wildfire outside the capital that killed more than 100 people.
Six years after the devastating wildfire in Attica’s seaside town of Mati and nearby areas, which claimed 104 lives and left dozens injured, a three-member misdemeanors court will issue its verdicts on the 21 defendants on Monday.
A significant mobilization of firefighting forces is underway in Fthiotida, southeastern Thessaly, to combat a blaze that ignited in a rural area.
A fire that broke out midday on Saturday in low-lying brushland near the highway linking the West Attica suburbs of Aegaleo and Aspropyrgos, had been partially contained before sundown, the Fire Service announced.
A fire erupted Thursday in Aghios Stefanos, within the Monemvasia municipality in Lakonia.
Three foreign nationals were arrested on Tuesday in connection with the fire that raged in an area of woodland on the Cycladic island of Paros on Monday.
