Fires Near Athens Leave a Path of Destruction

The Greek authorities said the threat posed by the blazes had lessened as of Tuesday, thanks in part to an overnight lull in the strong winds. But the risk remained.

One person dead. Homes and buildings charred. Huge tracts of forestland destroyed, the burned area leaving a thick scar covering nearly 25,000 acres northeast of Athens, the Greek capital, according to European satellite images.

Although the Greek authorities said on Tuesday that the threat to Athens posed by major wildfires that tore through its northern suburbs a day earlier had diminished, the damage caused has been “massive,” Vasilios Vathrakogiannis, the country’s fire service spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

And the true extent of the damage cannot be accurately assessed until the fires are completely doused, he said.

Several factors turned favorable for firefighters working to contain the blazes, which began on Sunday in Varnavas, a small town about 20 miles northeast of Athens, before being whipped by strong winds into several fronts.

The presence of Lake Marathon in the heart of the fires meant that firefighting aircraft were able to reload water there rather than flying to the sea and back, Mr. Vathrakogiannis said, and a lull in strong winds overnight aided the efforts. Until that point, he said, “As firefighters were putting out the fires, sparks were setting new ones behind them.”

Greece has also carried forward lessons from the catastrophic blaze last year in Evros, in northern Greece — the European Union’s worst on record — with the country’s civil protection minister, Vassilis Kikilias, referring to a “new doctrine” during a news briefing on Tuesday. The new approaches have included additional measures including the use of drones, which have helped put out hundreds of blazes this summer, he said, although “extreme conditions” had posed a particular challenge this time.

“This was not a simple fire that unfortunately got out of control,” Mr. Kikilias said. “We are talking about the most challenging and dangerous scenario for all firefighters, operational personnel and residents” — with a confluence of factors including gale-force winds and a challenging terrain of mountains, forests and scattered homes.

The cause of the fire near Athens remained unclear. It was one of more than 40 that Greece’s fire service responded to on Monday, including a blaze that broke out in the late evening near Glyfada, a southern coastal suburb of Athens, and was quickly doused. In that case, two 14-year-old boys seen at the scene face charges of arson and fines of 4,640 euros, about $5,070, each.

On Tuesday, Greek television showed video of charred hulks of buildings and cars against an ashen backdrop of fire-blackened trees in Varnavas, where civil protection officials interviewed residents whose properties had been damaged. State television estimated that 10 buildings were destroyed in that area.

A charred body found in a burned-out business in the suburbs north of the capital is believed to be that of a 63-year-old Moldovan woman who worked at the business, a manufacturer of wreaths for graves, Mr. Vathrakogiannis said.

Firefighters were still dealing with “small pockets” of fire in the affected areas, he said. And given that the fire risk will remain high over the coming days, he said, support requested from Greece’s European Union partners and other countries is on its way in the form of several water-dropping aircraft and hundreds of additional firefighters.

“Forty hours after the extremely dangerous wildfire broke out in Varnavas, we can now say that there is no active front, only scattered hot spots,” Mr. Kikilias said.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was to chair a meeting at the civil protection ministry on Tuesday afternoon to coordinate the response to the aftermath of the fires. The ministry said an electronic platform for residents whose homes were destroyed or damaged in the fires would go live in the coming days with initial compensation of up to €10,000 and further subsidies to follow.

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