Most fires in Greece are contained

The government is now
shifting its focus to relief efforts.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Winds relented throughout fire-ravaged Greece, enabling thousands of firefighters Wednesday to tame a rash of fires that killed at least 64 people and obliterated huge swaths of fields and forests over six days.

The fire department said all major blazes were receding, but authorities remained on high alert ahead of a new heat wave forecast for week’s end.

In the southern Peloponnese peninsula, where 57 of the deaths were recorded, the fronts were contained and firefighters — backed by more than 20 water-dropping aircraft — were moving in to extinguish lingering blazes.

“The fires are no longer spreading,” fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said. “We had a drop in the wind, which we exploited.” Temperatures also dipped to about 82 degrees in the region, compared to nearly 106 degrees when the fires erupted last week.

More fires

But late Wednesday, authorities evacuated five villages near the mountain town of Karytaina in the central Peloponnese after winds rekindled a blaze. The fire department said Karytaina, site of a medieval castle, was not in immediate danger.

At least two major fires still burned out of control near the Albanian border to the northwest, while on the hard-hit island of Evia north of Athens, where the other seven deaths occurred, all blazes were contained. Diamandis said no inhabited areas were threatened.

With most fires under control, the conservative government turned its attention to a vast relief effort — less than three weeks before national elections.

“Our main task now is to relieve the pain, the stress and the agony that the victims of the forest fires ... are feeling,” deputy government spokesman Evangelos Antonaros told The Associated Press.

The inferno destroyed hundreds of homes in dozens of villages, obliterated fragile mountain ecosystems — which will require decades to revive — displaced thousands of people and threatened an entire rural way of life. The blazes also spread to Ancient Olympia, the 2,800-year-old World Heritage site that is the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

The fire department, which has received aid from 19 countries, has not announced an overall damage assessment. But independent estimates say about 495,000 acres of forest, olive groves and scrub were consumed — the worse fire destruction in Greece since official record keeping began in the 1950s.