Fires in Greece: 55 killed, antique sites threatened

BTW a fire, even a bad fire, should not mean the end of a forest. It's part of a natural cycle. But a bad fire in a period of widespread drought is maybe a different matter.

Commentary
The burning of Greece
By E.G. Vallianatos

August 31, 2007

The Greeks already call Aug. 24, 2007, Black Friday, the day when fires all over the country started consuming forests, olive orchards, homes and, sometimes, people.

This ecological catastrophe caught the country unprepared at the peak of tourist season. High winds and high temperatures spread the fires to large areas in southern Greece, the Peloponnese area and the large island of Euboea while, in most instances, in towns and villages threatened by fires, there was virtually no firefighting equipment available. People faced the fires alone and, in the ensuing panic, more than 60 lost their lives.

Peloponnese, especially Elis in northwest Peloponnese, including the sacred land of ancient Olympia, suffered tremendous damage: Thousands of acres of forest, brush land, and olive groves became dust overnight, wiping out the livelihoods of thousands of people and devastating the precious natural world. Fires in Elis alone killed 40 people, destroyed 350 homes and burned about 5 million olive trees.

I listened for several hours a day for several days to the telephone calls people from all over Greece made to the hosts of the public radio station in Athens. Sometimes local officials reported their communities' efforts in fighting fires. However, the essence of the messages and discussion was the pain and anger Greeks felt for the loss of the natural heritage of Greece, literally the intentional burning of the country by an invisible enemy.

One Greek said: "They roasted us like fish," where "they" was understood to be local Greeks working for construction companies or foreign agents fighting a war against Greece. The mayor of Peristeri, a suburb of Athens, described the situation as a "fiery tsunami."

No Greek government has taken nature seriously; the country has yet to develop a land registry system. More than five years ago, the European Union gave Greece funds for such an essential project, but nothing came of it. The result of such anomie is that arson is part of development: There are some 2 million illegal land holdings in Greece. No one knows the exact location and dimensions of the national forests. The forest service barely exists. It is underfunded and has an inadequate number of foresters.

For example, there are only four foresters for two islands, Kephalonia and Ithake. Megalopolis, at the center of Arkadia in Peloponnese, was surrounded by fire, but it did not have a single fire engine.

The August burning of Greece revealed the deplorable, unacceptable and dangerous situation into which the country has fallen.

Greece is a tourist nation, almost entirely devoted to serving foreigners for a few months a year; however, the country is bereft of self-sufficiency and sustainable infrastructure for the protection of nature, including forests, agriculture and agrarian life.

Greek government's corrupt policies make it possible for gangsters, usually associated with builders and bankers, to burn national forests or parklands, which, in time, the government privatizes for apartment buildings. No Greek law exists that criminalizes such behavior.

A woman from Sparta said to me her family lost all its olive trees. What young person, she asked, would stay or return to farming when it takes about 10 years for the new olive tree to bear fruit?

Clearly, Greece is going through an existential crisis, perhaps the most serious in its life as an independent country.

Facing and resolving this crisis will demand remaking the political and cultural life of the country. The party political system in Greece is neither Greek nor democratic. Greeks must refashion their politics to mirror their ancient democratic traditions.

Such a return to Greek democratic thought would, first of all, demand that the country reinvent itself for a livable, ecological and political future. It is unconscionable that almost half of the Greek population inhabits Athens. Such a monstrous city is a cancer, eating the rest of the country.

Athens and other huge cities must shrink significantly. Start that process by spreading government ministries and funding to the provinces. Why are the ministry of agriculture and the agricultural university in Athens? They would be more useful in Thessaly or Peloponnese. Large cities impoverish the rest of the country, depriving it of resources and protection.

Rural Greece is burning primarily because it's largely abandoned.

Second, the government must fund economic and cultural activity in the countryside, keeping most of the people in rural Greece, revitalizing the country, making it self-sufficient, alive and prosperous. The government must also strengthen laws protecting the environment and forests, while passing legislation mandating a land registry and making forest fires a criminal act, eliminating all incentives that forest lands could ever become private property.

Finally, the European Union and the United States ought to help Greece build its firefighting infrastructure and assist in the mapping of the country's forests.

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E.G. Vallianatos is the author of "This Land is Their Land" and "The Passion of the Greeks."

The statistics

64 The number of people who have died in the fires

8 The number of days that the fires have been raging for so far

6,000 The number of homes believed to have been destroyed in the fires

4m The number of olive trees estimated to have been burnt

MEPs blame Greek fires on land mismanagement
04.09.2007 - 17:42 CET | By Lucia Kubosova

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - MEPs have criticised Greece for infrastructure deficiencies in managing forests and property development, suggesting it has led to the outbreak of fires over the years, including the current fires which have killed over 60 people.

The tragedy has turned the spotlight to Greece's persistent delays in mapping and setting up a land registry for the country.

The EU had provided Greece with the funds to do this in the 1990s, but Greece has had to repay them for not carrying out the job properly.

In a resolution adopted on Tuesday (4 September), the European Parliament urged the European Commission to provide financial aid to the regions most affected by forest fires this summer with the cost of the damage assessed at some €1.2 to €4 billion.

But MEPs also condemned the practice of allowing construction on protected and non-authorised areas, including burnt-down forests, which experts believe motivated arsonists as a way of obtaining new land.

It is estimated that there are around 2 million illegal land holdings in Greece. As the only EU country without a full land registry, it is easier to have burnt land reclassified as farmland and start building on it.

"It is a disgrace that property developers should be allowed to take advantage of these disasters by building on former forest land," Swedish Green MEP Carl Schlyter commented.

"It is important that the EU should assist member states affected by these disasters, however it is equally important that those member states in receipt of EU aid ensure that the funds are used as intended," he added.

EU funds not used as intended
Over a decade ago, the EU put aside around €100 million for Greece to finally register its land.

However, a few years later, in 2001, Brussels demanded the money back because of various delays and irregularities in the way the huge project had been carried out.

At the time of the commission investigations, only a quarter of the initial estimate to register land had been met, meaning 8,440 sq kilometres instead of 35,000 sq kilometres envisaged under the EU's 1994-99 plan.

The then commissioner in charge of regional policy, Michel Barnier, insisted that there would be no more EU funding to complete the country's land registry.

A Greek diplomat told EUobserver the country's authorities are indeed "trying to finish off the work on the land registry project without EU support, although there have been some funds put aside for supporting services, such as getting satellite pictures of the area or setting up a digital database of those images."

Jacques Poncet, in charge of the commission's unit for aid to Greece, said those funds were assigned to the country for the new "programming period" with the target for finalising the project in 2008.

"We have had meetings about this matter with Greek officials and they assured us that the work is going on as planned. I know they had some public procurement issues but it is too early to say whether they could endanger the new deadlines," he said.

In any case, the fires in Greece are set to influence the country's elections on 16 September, with the centre-right government coming under fire for its handling of the crisis.