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Greece caught in fierce fires
19/07/2007 22:26 - (SA)
Corinth - Fire officials say a children's summer camp in southern Greece and an entire village have been evacuated due to an approaching forest fire.
All the children attending the camp near the village of Chiliomodi, about 100km west of Athens, were safe and had been transferred to a primary school in the village on Thursday.
Some Chiliomodi homes located near the woods had also been evacuated and traffic had been disrupted on the major highways in the area, including the one linking the Peloponnesian city of Corinth to the Greek capital.
Nearly 300 firefighters, using 70 trucks, 12 planes and four helicopters, had been sent to battle the blaze, which was laying waste to pine forests and farmland and threatening livestock.
The same fire had caused the evacuation of around 30 monks from a monastery in Corinth on Wednesday.
Firefighters had brought the blaze under control on Tuesday before it began burning again on Wednesday morning, threatening the village of Mampsos.
Another fire erupted in western Corinth, threatening the village of Derveni whose inhabitants had been evacuated as a precautionary measure, officials said on Thursday.
Temperatures on Thursday meanwhile touched 38 degree Celsius.
Two other fires that erupted in Laconia, on the Ionian island of Zakynthos, and in Nafpaktos in the centre of the country were also still burning fiercely
- AFP
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