Since Aug. 24, Greece has faced its worst forest fire disaster ever, in the size of burned area and loss of life and property. A heat wave (temperatures above 101 degrees Fahrenheit for three days) was followed by a day of winds reaching 50 to 70 kilometers per hour and extremely low relative humidity (8% to 20%). In South Greece there has been no rain all summer and three heat waves, leaving the vegetation highly stressed.

When this situation was faced with ineffective initial fire attack from the ground, the stage was set for disaster. Two fires started on Aug. 24, on mount Parnon (east of Sparta) and on mount Taygetos (west of Sparta) in Peloponnese. They soon started raging out of control. A new fire erupted the following morning near the towns of Oitylo and Areopolis, roughly 30 km south of the fire of Taygetos. This fire caused the first six deaths. It attracted the attention of the Fire Service and the media until, in the afternoon, news about massive fatalities in a new fire in Ilia (western Peloponnese) started coming.

As the news about the deaths started adding up, coordination started failing. New fires that started in other parts of Peloponnese and on Evia Island morth of Athens did not receive proper initial attack. They escaped and started growing quickly. They were not attacked methodically. One to three fire trucks were sent to each village in the fire's path. Evacuations were ordered or spontaneously started in panic. The perimeter of all fires (not only the front, which was too difficult to confront) was practically abandoned. The fires kept growing until some of them united with each other. The large fleet of aerial means did not offer effective help partly because of the extreme conditions (on some occasions Canadair planes were not able to operate safely due to the wind), but also due to a lack of ground forces below them to extinguish the fire.

For the four following days, due to the large number and size of fires and the countless pleas for help, aerial means and ground forces were used ineffectively as they were not finishing any job. The planes and helicopters were sent here and there for a few drops, and then called-off to another fire.

Not realizing that tactical firefighting based only on Fire Service resources was doomed to fail by Saturday morning, the whole mechanism kept pushing people to evacuate villages indiscriminately, instead of coordinating capable villagers to help the state prepare their homes and agricultural fields (such as clearing grasses in their olive groves) in advance, fight flanking fires with their agricultural equipment, protect themselves in the village.

There is no official count of the total burned area, but it clearly exceeds 100,000 hectares (about 40,500 acres). More than half of the prefecture of Ilia has burned. The ancient site of Olympia, which was surrounded by pine forest, was barely saved due to focused ground forces, strong aerial support and an on-ground automatic sprinkler system installed before the 2004 Olympic Games. Large areas also burned in Arcadia, Laconia, Messinia, Corinthia, and on the island of Evia. More than 110 villages were destroyed leaving thousands of people homeless.

The government is trying to handle the situation on the public relations side. It declared a general state of emergency, mobilized the army, and announced increased support for those whose properties were destroyed. Officials talked about an organized arson plan, without, however, presenting any evidence.

Sixty-four people have died due to these fires. The number is expected to increase a little more as many injured people are in hospitals, some of them with serious burns. Most of the dead were caught in the open either trying to flee or surrounded by the fire as they were trying to save their property.

Finally, special mention should be made of the support from aerial firefighting and ground crews that Greece received from many other European and non-European countries. The aerial fleet that is operating now is probably the largest assembled anywhere.

Currently, the situation in regard to fire spread has improved as the wind subsided, but the fires are still not controlled. No one can be sure when the fires will stop spreading. The Greek television channels, most of them having continuous 24-hour coverage of the fires since Friday, are showing a continuous battle against fire re-starts along the large fire perimeters. Much of their footage looks like a textbook example of the ineffectiveness of aerial firefighting when it is not followed by well-coordinated ground firefighting.

Xanthopoulos, a research forester specializing in forest fires, is based in Athens, Greece. He is also an International Association of Wildland Fire board member.