Greece appoints new minister to handle wildfire aftermath

• Wildfire breaks out east of Rome, locals evacuated
• Firefighters bring northeastern Spain blaze under control
• Russia ramps up Siberia battle

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has appointed a new minister in charge of recovery from natural disasters in an attempt to defuse growing anger over the struggle to curb wildfires that have charred thousands of hectares of forest.
Mitsotakis has this week apologised for delays in the firefighting effort while defending his government’s action and authorising a €500mn ($586.95mn) relief package.
Hundreds of houses and businesses have been destroyed and around 65,000 hectares (160,620 acres) of forest destroyed by the conflagrations since the start of August, with relief finally brought by rain on Thursday on Evia, Greece’s second-largest island and the scene of some of the worst blazes.
Fire brigade officials told Reuters that forest fires on Evia and in the mainland Western Peloponnese and Northern Attica regions remained under control but that many firefighters had stayed on in the areas to fight possible flare-ups.
“The internal government reshuffle is aimed at strengthening the response to natural disasters and crises and at supporting residents of the fire-affected areas,” a senior government official told Reuters.
The new deputy minister, Christos Triantopoulos, will be responsible for aid and recovery from natural disasters, a new post created to compensate businesses and families hard hit by recent blazes.
With a string of deadly wildfires burning in countries from Turkey to Algeria amidst record summer heatwaves, extreme weather events caused by climate change have become a central policy challenge to governments across the Mediterranean.
In Greece, one civilian has been killed and another died helping prepare fire defences.
Two injured firefighters are in hospital.
Other new faces in the Greek government include Ioannis Economou, a deputy agriculture minister, as government spokesman – a position that had been vacant since March.
In Italy, locals were meanwhile evacuated yesterday from small communities around 40km (25 miles) east of Rome when a wildfire broke out as the Italian capital faced temperatures of around 37° Celsius (99 Fahrenheit).
Swathes of southern Italy have been plagued by wildfires in recent weeks, with flames ravaging woodland in Calabria, in the toe of the Italian boot, and on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
Wednesday saw the temperature reach almost 49C in southeastern Sicily, reported as the highest temperature ever recorded in Europe.
The heatwave is now moving north and overnight 25 families were evacuated from their homes as fires spread through the nature reserve of Monte Catillo, near the Rome suburb of Tivoli, firefighters said in a tweet.
Around 30 residents of a home for poor children and orphans were also evacuated to escape the flames.
Wildfires also broke out overnight near the town of Otranto, in Italy’s southern heel, firefighters said.
A nearby seaside resort was evacuated due to the choking smoke and the coastal road heading south from Otranto was closed to traffic.
Firefighters brought a wildfire in a forest in Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia under control yesterday as scorching temperatures put most of the country at risk for blazes.
About 100 firefighters worked overnight to tame the blaze in the Spanish province of Tarragona, which forced the evacuation on Thursday of about 30 campers and has destroyed about 75 hectares (185 acres) of protected forest, Catalonia’s firefighting service said in a tweet.
The fire was under control yesterday morning, but 11 water trucks, a helicopter and two water-dropping planes were still at the scene of the blaze, the service added.
Elsewhere in Spain, dozens of firefighters were battling a wildfire which broke out on Thursday evening near the town of Rubia, in the verdant northwestern region of Galicia.
This fire has so far destroyed about 200 hectares of land, the regional government of Galicia said in a tweet.
Spain’s weather office AEMET said almost all of the country faced a “high”, “very high” or “extreme” risk of wildfires on Friday due to the scorching temperatures.
Only a sliver of the northern coast and parts of the eastern region of Valencia on the Mediterranean coast had a “low” or “moderate” risk.
The weather office said that 15 of Spain’s 17 autonomous regions were on alert for high temperatures, with the mercury forecast to reach highs of 36-40C (97-104F) yesterday in much of the country.
Temperatures could hit 46C (115F) in the provinces of Seville, Cordoba and Jaen in the southwestern Andalusia region.
The hot weather is expected to last until Monday.
Russia launched yesterday a national response centre and deployed additional firefighters to battle record-setting wildfires tearing through its coldest region of Yakutia in Siberia.
While Siberia sees an annual wildfire season each summer, the fires have burned with an increasing intensity in recent years, which Russian weather officials and environmentalists have linked to climate change.
In Yakutia, one of the hardest-hit regions this year, fires have already burned through more than 9.4mn hectares (23.2mn acres) – an area larger than Portugal – according to Russia’s forestry agency.
The emergencies ministry said that it had launched a national response centre to fight the blazes in Yakutia – a sparsely populated region nearly five times the size of France – saying that it would handle day-to-day management.
It added that it had sent another 200 specialists to support the more than 5,000 people currently battling the blazes in the region.