Tourists heading to Greece have been warned of extreme weather and wildfires as thousands of people have been evacuated from areas near the capital of Athens.
Residents fled their homes on Sunday as a fast-moving wildfire outside Athens fuelled by hot, windy weather burned trees, houses and cars and sent smoke clouds over the Greek capital.
A children’s hospital was also evacuated and emergency alerts continued to be sent out on Monday morning.
More than 400 firefighters backed by 16 waterbombing planes and 13 helicopters battled the blaze that broke out at 3pm and quickly reached the village of Varnavas 35 km (20 miles) north of Athens.
As the Olympics came to a close in Paris the historic town of Marathon, 40km east of Athens, was forced to evacuate.
On Sunday night firefighting aircraft ceased operations until Monday. Emergency alerts continued to be sent throughout the night.
The area of Kallitechnoupoli was being evacuated on Monday morning, an area close to the port town of Rafina where 104 people died from a wildfire in 2018.
Flames turned the sky orange and Athens was engulfed with smoke with many posting images to social media. Residents and tourists have been told to shut their windows in many areas as a heatwave continues to bake the city with temperatures of 37C forecast.
Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis returned to Athens on Sunday, cutting his holiday short.
“The situation remains dangerous as the fire is spreading between residences,” fire brigade spokesperson Vassilis Vathrakogiannis said.
He said the blaze spread fast, “like lightning”, due to gale force winds. Flames as high as 25 metres swallowed up trees and shrubland.
Varnavas is a sparely populated area with about 1,800 residents, according to the latest census.
“The village was surrounded in no time, in no time. It’s really windy,” resident Katerina Fylaktou told Reuters. “It started from one point and suddenly the whole village was surrounded,” she said.
A fire warning map of Greece as issued on Monday:
Meanwhile, some tourist islands across Greece have been hit by water supply issues this summer after a severe lack of rainfall and a huge increase in visitors over the summer months.
Greece is facing a severe water shortage problem this summer due to the extreme heat and drought.
Hundreds of wildfires have broken out across Greece since May and scientists attribute their frequency and intensity to the increasingly hot and dry weather conditions linked to climate change.
After its warmest winter on record and long periods of little or no rainfall, Greece also registered its hottest June and July and is forecast to record its hottest-ever summer.
“We are expecting a very difficult week,” said Kostas Lagouvardos, research director of the Athens Observatory. “If the Varnavas blaze is not contained during the night, we will have a problem tomorrow,” he said.
Fires have also burned this summer amid extreme heat elsewhere in Europe, including in Spain and the Balkans.
Several other regions across Greece were on high alert for fire risk on Sunday and Monday.
On Saturday, Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said he had called for emergency measures involving the army, police and volunteers to deal with forest fires until August 15.
“Extremely high temperatures and dangerous weather conditions will prevail,” he said.
“Half of Greece will be in the red.”
In April, a European Commission report said the 2023 wildfire season in the Europe was among the worst this century.