New wildfires flare up in Greece

A magnitude-5 earthquake also struck the area Tuesday.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — More wildfires broke out and others rekindled Tuesday as anger rose over the government’s handling of catastrophic blazes that have laid waste to vast stretches of the Greek countryside and killed at least 64 people.

The fires are dominating political debate ahead of parliamentary elections set for Sept. 16. Criticism that the government failed to respond quickly enough — and its suggestions that the fires resulted from an organized attack — could hurt Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis.

Foreign firefighters and aircraft joined in battling the fires that first broke out Thursday and burned nearly 500,000 acres in the first three days, leaving behind a landscape of blackened tree trunks, gutted houses and dead livestock.

Firefighting efforts concentrated on the Seta area of Evia island and on the village of Matesi near Zaharo in the western Peloponnese. Another blaze broke out in Grammatiko, near ancient Marathon, but the fire department said that one was under control by nightfall.

Earthquake

Adding to the unease, a magnitude-5 earthquake shook the fire-ravaged south, panicking residents although there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

Most of the firefighters sent in by 21 countries were operating in the Peloponnese, fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said. He said 18 planes and 18 helicopters would be used to drop water on blazes in that southern region, where he said the situation was improving.

“The picture we have gives us some optimism,” Diamandis said. “We have a good picture and hope for some good results.”

From the northern border with Albania to the southern island of Crete, fires have ravaged expanses of forest and farmland.

“We have been destroyed, we have nothing left,” cried Katerina Andonopoulou, a 76-year-old woman trudging from the edge of Ancient Olympia to her wrecked house in the nearby village of Platano laden with a bundle of leaves for the five surviving goats from her flock of 20. “Who will help us now?”

The devastation has infuriated Greeks, who already had been stunned by deadly forest fires in June and July and are complaining of an inadequate effort by the conservative government to confront the latest disaster.

The Sept. 16 ballot will be “the elections of rage,” the Athens newspaper To Vima said in a front-page headline.