Three firefighters were killed on Crete and in mainland Greece before Sunday's helicopter collision. That earlier toll is the wildfire context for the crash, not a footnote. [1]

The Guardian reported on July 29 that three firefighters died as Europe fought extreme heat and blazes from Madrid to the Aegean. Two died on Crete. A third died the same day in the Peloponnese. [1]

DW reported thousands evacuated on Crete as fires tore through farmland, olive groves, and houses. The island's tourist belt emptied under the same heat that later pushed Attica to a level-four fire risk. [2]

ABC, writing after the Psatha collision, restated the same three deaths as the week's prior cost. The Sunday crash added a Greek coordinator and a Danish pilot. The running total is no longer three. [3]

The paper keeps the Crete deaths in their own slot so the helicopter story cannot absorb them. Ground crews died first. Aerial crews died next. The climate and the staffing model produced both.

Crete's evacuations were already a tourist-season story on July 30. The firefighter deaths make it a labor story. Combining them with Sunday's crash into one "Greece fire" brief would erase the island's own dead.

-- DARA OSEI, London