Two dead in Turkey after wildfires ripped through villages and saw 50,000 evacuated as blazes flared in Crete amid Europe's heatwave hell

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Two people have died in wildfires that ripped through Turkey as blazes erupted in Crete amid Europe's heatwave hell.
One elderly victim died in a fire near Odemis, around 60 miles east of Izmir, in one of three villages evacuated in the area, Turkish lawmaker Salih Uzun told Halk TV.
'The village was evacuated but an elderly, bedridden patient could not be saved,' said Uzun. A forest worker in the same area died as he battled the blazes, the country's agriculture minister Ibrahim Yumakli said on X.
Turkey, which was spared the recent heatwaves that gripped the rest of southern Europe, has been battling the effects of a long-term drought brought on by climate change.
On Monday, more than 50,000 people were evacuated, mostly in the Izmir area but also from the southern province of Hatay, the AFAD disaster management agency said.
Another major fire raged near Cesme, west of Izmir, which began late on Wednesday and forced the evacuation of a further three villages.
'The biggest problem is the wind speed of up to 53mph which is causing the fire to spread very quickly. And it constantly changes direction,' Izmir governor Suleyman Elban said.
The highway linking Izmir to Cesme temporarily closed Thursday afternoon, but was reopened in the evening, Elban said on X.
In both places, a total of 'nine planes, 22 helicopters and 1,100 (fire trucks and other) vehicles are intensively fighting the fires', the governor told reporters.
He said both fires in the province, as well as those that began at the weekend and were brought under control, 'were caused by power cables'.
Earlier, two other fires broke out - one in the southern resort of Antalya and the second in Istanbul's Sultan Gazi forest.
They were quickly contained by firefighters, officials said.
Footage from Antalya showed flames raging in a forested area near a residential area in Lara, a popular tourist resort with many large hotels, but a municipal official told AFP it was under control.
Since Friday, hundreds of fires have been reported across drought-hit Turkey, fuelled by high winds.
It comes after a survivor of the deadly Hatay quake in February, Aysel Erbas, 57, has now faced a second tragedy as the recent Turkey wildfires destroyed her belongings while she was preparing to move into her newly built home.
The blaze broke out out on June 30 in the Karaali neighborhood and spread rapidly to six nearby districts due to strong winds.
Although firefighting teams have now brought the fire under control, cooling operations and damage assessments are ongoing in the affected areas.
'I was cleaning the kitchen, closing windows to prevent dust, when I saw smoke everywhere and had to run outside,' she told Daily Sabah.
'I lost my phone and all my belongings inside the house. I could only put out the sparks with the small amount of water I had.
'Everyone was trying to survive amid the fire, but thankfully, some neighbors came to help. I was later taken to an ambulance after possibly inhaling smoke,' she added.
According to figures on the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) website, there have been 90 wildfires in Turkey so far this year that have ravaged almost 87,000 acres of land.
The figure on Monday was over 37,000 acres destroyed in 65 fires.
Citing forestry ministry figures, meteorologist Ismail Kucuk told AFP that '90 percent of forest fires' were due to man-made causes.
Power cables posed a risk if they were not properly maintained, said Kucuk, secretary general of Turkey's chamber of metrology engineers.
In some regions, cables broke easily because they had not been maintained since electricity distribution companies had been privatised, he said.
Experts say human-driven climate change is causing more frequent and more intense wildfires and other natural disasters, and have warned Turkey to take measures to tackle the problem.
The Turkey blazes comes as a rapidly spreading wildfire on the Greek island of Crete today triggered widespread evacuations of tourists, hotels and homes.
The blaze, which sparked in the mountains between the villages of Ferma, Achila and Agia Fota late Tuesday, was whipped up by powerful winds and tore through Crete's coastal areas yesterday.
Authorities said evacuations were ordered at three sites outside the port of Ierapetra on the island's south coast as the inferno raged out of control overnight Wednesday into this morning.
Around 230 firefighters were operating in the area overnight to try and contain the blaze. This morning, 10 water-dropping aircraft were dispatched to fly regular sorties over Crete, with reinforcements sent from Athens.
People living in the area support the teams by carrying water to the area with their tractors as smoke rises from burning trees while air and land intervention continues against the fire that broke out in the forest area in Cesme district of Izmir
According to figures on the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS) website, there have been 90 wildfires in Turkey so far this year that have ravaged almost 87,000 acres of land
Reports of the number of people evacuated vary, but the president of a hotelier's association this morning told Protothema that 5,000 people - mostly foreign tourists - were moved out of homes and hotels in what is one of Greece's most popular holiday hotspots.
Fire brigade spokesmen and civil protection officials have so far confirmed around 1,500 evacuees were forced to leave their accommodation. Others stranded on the beach were whisked away by boats and rescue vessels.
Homes were reported damaged as flames swept through hillside forests, fanned by strong winds, and emergency services reported that several people were transported to hospital with respiratory issues.
'It's a very difficult situation. The fire is very hard to contain. Right now, they cannot contain it,' Nektarios Papadakis, a civil protection official at the regional authority, said.