A fire has broken out following several explosions at a cookware factory in the north Athens suburb of Kifissia, with civil protection authorities issuing an emergency message urging residents to stay indoors.
Athens factory Fire
The factory is located in the Panorama area, near the Fire Service academy and just next to another plant, raising fears it may spread. Around 42 firefighters with 15 vehicles have been dispatched to the scene.
Clouds of black smoke enveloped the sky around the area, while residents of Kato Kifissia received a message from the 112 emergency service telling them to stay indoors, with their windows and doors shut.
Huge factory fire on the outskirts of Athens. Smoke can be seen for miles. pic.twitter.com/FZf1y3aCdt
— Brian Tweedale (@BrianHTweed) June 12, 2024
The side road off the national highway, in addition to Aiginon Street, has been closed to traffic.
(This is a developing story.)
In previous fire-related news, Greece experienced 3,543 wildfires between January 1st and May 1st. This is an increase of 22 percent compared to last year’s 2,907 blazes, according to the Fire Service, which is bracing for a very difficult season.
What is causing particular alarm is that “some of these fires displayed characteristics similar to blazes we would expect during the summer,” Theodore Giannaros, an expert at the National Observatory of Athens (NOA), told the Athens-Macedonian News Agency.
“We are also very alarmed by the fact that we had a blaze at a very high altitude in the Pierian Mountains, which should have been covered by snow that would have prevented such a fire from starting,” he added.
The head of research at the NOA, Kostas Lagouvardos, added that low rainfall over the past few months is also compounding fears with the European Drought Observatory having already issued a warning for Greece.
Last winter was the warmest – and therefore most likely to see fires – since modern records began being kept in 1960, according to the National Observatory of Athens, which analyzed European Union satellite data. The six warmest Greek winters on record have occurred in the past decade.
That’s against the backdrop of new data revealing that Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, its temperatures rising at roughly twice the global average.
Vassilis Kikilias, the minister for climate crisis and civil protection, says authorities expect annual conditions to worsen further. “It will be a very difficult fire season, a very difficult summer,” says Kikilias.
“We had a dry winter and fall temperatures lasting until December. So we’re facing the climate crisis head on,” he told the Associated Press recently.
Wildfires ravaged Greece in 2023
Greece was hit by hundreds of wildfires last summer. The country witnessed the largest wildfire in Europe since records began being kept in 2000. The wildfires impacted the region of Evros in northeastern Greece.
According to a European Union official, the mega-fire decimated more than 96,000 hectares, an area bigger than the Berlin metropolitan region, and killed at least twenty people.