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As we witnessed in Greece fire takes no prisoner but destroys everything in its unchartered path burning down trees, homes and incinerating cars and human life. It shows no mercy in destroying lives, communities and the environment.
Rising from the ashes of the initial shock of what happened in Athens, there is inconsolable grief and angry residents who feel they were left to burn in hell as the flames fanned through the resort town of Mati and elsewhere.
Athens, and Greece in general, is no stranger to wildfires during the summer but they occur with such alarming frequency that it is impossible for criminal negligence not to be involved. And with the summers becoming longer, drier and hotter, there is also an argument for climate change also playing a part in accentuating the heightened risk of fire.
Needless to say, we ignore nature at our peril, the environment must be respected because if ignore you are faced with destructive fires and floods. Just days after the deadly blaze swept through the Attica region of Athens, a heavy downpour caused flash flooding. In both cases it can be argued that better town planning and regulated building controls accompanied by flood and fire prevention measures could have made a noticeable difference.
Sometimes nothing can be done from stopping a disaster from happening, but we can reduce the odds in our favour unless it is of biblical proportions, then only prayers can be answered. But this is of little solace to those who have lost loved ones in the carnage of the flames. There are many heartbreaking stories of impossible choices in parents trying to save children in the furnace of confusion and panic.
Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos blamed illegal construction in contributing to one of the country's worst-ever wildfire disasters.
He said most of the properties along the Athens coast were built illegally and not in compliance with any safety rules. This has obviously been allowed over a long period of time with authorities not having the tools or the determination to make it right.
The minister said building by residents between wooded areas was a "crime" that had resulted in blocking escape routes. Many were only metres from the sea but could not reach it. Surely, the Greek government could have done more to contain such breaches of the law.
Kammenos was confronted by angry locals – who claimed they were left to die – as he visited areas devastated by fires east of Athens.
Others said they had gone to the fire station to ask for help and found firefighters unaware of the blaze.
Another resident complained that people had been advised to dive into the sea to escape, when most of the elderly were unable to reach the sea in the first place.
Mati residents complained of the slow response of the emergency services and the army, but firefighters were tackling fires on different fronts in the east and west of the region, stretching their resources and capability.
Hundreds of homes were burnt in the blaze that spread quickly through a residential area with no town planning, the streets became clogged with parked and abandoned cars as people tried to flee, hampering access by firefighting trucks and blocking escape routes.
There also seems to have been no official evacuation plan to ensure a coordinated response to such disasters – a probe into the fire is looking into this issue as well.
Recrimination and Accusation
Survivors have accused authorities of failing to adequately prepare and for not giving an evacuation order soon enough, it was all too little too late. It is natural for there to be recriminations and accusations in a disaster such as this.
Cyprus did not hesitate to go to the aid of Greece in its hour of need, but the government can take some bitter lessons from what occurred in Athens.
There are serious questions to consider: Does the island have adequate firefighting resources and personnel? Is our own haphazard approach to town planning putting lives at risk? Are we building sustainable developments that respects the environment? Does Cyprus have a coordinated evacuation strategy for a timely response to a wildfire engulfing a resort area?
Or are we allowing people to disregard rules and regulation at our peril while also turning a blind eye to environmental encroachment of big development projects.
From 1991 to 2004, the Attica region and its surrounding resort areas, lost 26% of its forest area, according to a local study. It also found that more than 65% of fires in the region started for unknown reasons. Only 2.6% have been attributed to natural causes.
Greeks have speculated that the recent fires could have been started on purpose by landowners eager to clear protected forestland for development.
On a European level there needs to be a more joined-up approach to tackling natural disasters and EU crisis commissioner Christos Stylianides pointed out the need to strengthen its collective response capacities while boosting prevention & preparedness.
The existing rules on civil protection foresee a voluntary pool to provide mutual support in Europe.
But the EU is looking to upgrade the mechanism to strengthening current capacities to establish rescEU, a system to be used as a last resort when existing national capacities and the pool prove to be insufficient.
However, recent experience has shown that reliance on voluntary offers of mutual assistance coordinated by the mechanism does not always ensure it has adequate means to tackle a disaster.
This mechanism comes under strain when countries are simultaneously affected by recurrent disasters and collective capacity is insufficient.
There is much to learn and to get right.
