Wildfires west of Athens jumped containment lines on Tuesday, a day after two firefighting helicopters collided in midair and killed two crew members. [1] Firefighters raced to use a break in high winds to thicken those lines before stronger gusts and hotter temperatures returned. [2]
The paper's Monday account of two firefighters killed when helicopters collided over Greece treated the crash as the day's completed human cost. Tuesday did not replace that cost. It added a weather clock. Several fires that had burned through mountain communities and coastal areas west of the capital were brought under control overnight. Planes and helicopters dumped water inside the perimeters while the winds stayed calm. [2] Democracy Now still recorded the jump. Both things can be true in the same morning.
"There is a huge fire load in the area and the risk goes up as the day progresses," said Costas Tsingas, head of the Greek Firefighters Association. "The goal is for the day to end better than it started." [2]
The blaze outside Athens was in its fifth day. It had already forced the evacuation of more than one thousand people and was blamed on a faulty power line from a wind farm. More than two hundred fifty people were taken off beaches by boat around the seaside resort of Porto Germeno. [2] The army sent tracked earth movers to carve breaks across scorched hillsides. Specialist units walked into forest to kill smoldering embers before they could reignite. [2]
Wires wrote containment. X still treated the collision as the story. A reader who only sees the overnight hold will think the week is over. A reader who only sees the crash loop will miss that Tuesday's job was dirt, water, and a forecast.
Authorities said thirty-three people were arrested between June 29 and August 2 for starting fires, thirty through negligence and three on suspicion of arson. Most of the negligence cases involved farm work carried out despite local bans, including welding. [2] That ledger sits beside the wind farm line. It does not replace it.
Winds typically pick up in the afternoon, a coastal pattern common across the Mediterranean in summer as land heats faster than the sea. [2] The crash grounded attention. It did not ground the sea breeze. Greece had already grounded parts of its Bell fleet after Monday's collision. The remaining aircraft worked a smaller sky.
Porto Germeno is a resort name that now means boats and ash. Houses and boats burned there on Monday. Aerial pictures on Tuesday showed black forest on Mount Kithairon. [2] Containment is a verb that has to be redone every afternoon. The crash took two crew out of that verb. The remaining crews inherited a fifth day and a forecast that does not care about funerals.
Restrictions and park closures still follow local fire-risk levels. Welding bans exist because last month's arrests were mostly farmers and tradesmen, not cartoon arsonists. [2] The wind-farm line remains the official spark for the big western fire. Those two facts can share a paragraph. They should not be collapsed into a single villain.
Tuesday's water drops inside already-burned perimeters are the unglamorous work that keeps a contained fire from becoming Monday again. [2] Hot spots do not trend. Midair collisions do. The paper will not pretend the collision is over as a story. It will also not pretend the collision is the only story west of Athens.
The completed record is a jump, a pause, and a clock. Lines failed after the crash. Crews used calm air to rebuild them. The afternoon wind was still coming. [1][2] The next edition will owe the reader whether those lines held. This one owes the reader the jump and the two dead from Monday.
-- DARA OSEI, London