Horror as Greek Firefighting Helicopters Collide During Wildfire Operation

Two Greek firefighting helicopters collided in mid-air on Sunday as crews battled massive wildfires in the region around the Corinthian Gulf. The fire service said the collision occurred in the Psatha area, west of the capital Athens, and search and rescue teams were immediately deployed to locate and assist the crews on the ground. Television footage showed one helicopter exploding and crashing in flames after the rotors of the two aircraft apparently struck each other. Two crew members were killed, while two others survived the accident. The incident occurred as firefighters across Greece continued to struggle with wildfires. Three firefighters have also died in recent days while on duty, two in Crete and one in the Peloponnese. The blazes have been made increasingly difficult to control by gale-force winds reaching speeds of up to 100 kilometres per hour. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned that the country faces ‘very difficult days’ ahead, stating that when winds blow with such intensity, even the dozens of aircraft available cannot operate safely. He added that there are times when nature and the intensity of weather phenomena surpass all human planning and operational capability. To the north of Psatha, in the neighbouring town of Porto Germeno, nearly 500 firefighters were trying to prevent the fire from approaching the western suburbs of Athens after it spread through a mountainous area overnight. Police footage showed officers going door-to-door on motorcycles in the hillside village of Agios Nektarios, sounding sirens and shouting for residents to evacuate. On Friday, firefighters evacuated 254 people by sea, a route often used as a last resort for remote coastal communities in the country, with a further 12 people evacuated on Saturday. ‘It is hard to believe what we are seeing,’ Nikos Georgopoulos from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki’s forest management laboratory told state television ERT. ‘The fire is spreading very fast.’ In the western part of the Corinthian Gulf, around 100 firefighters were tackling another blaze in Aigialia, in the northern Peloponnese. Meanwhile, a 44-year-old man was arrested on Sunday on suspicion of deliberately starting a new fire that broke out on Saturday night on the island of Kefalonia, a popular tourist destination in the Ionian Sea. Climate trackers from the National Observatory of Athens, meteo.gr, said preliminary estimates indicated that more than 6,500 hectares of land had been burned in the fires around the Corinthian Gulf. Meteorologist Theodore Giannaros said the fire around Porto Germeno had the potential to be classified as a megafire.