Firefighters Battle Forest Blaze Near Athens Suburbs

A fire scorched forests at the base of Mount Penteli north of Athens Tuesday and was approaching the surrounding suburbs, firefighters and local authorities said

Athens, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 27th Jul, 2021 ) :A fire scorched forests at the base of Mount Penteli north of Athens Tuesday and was approaching the surrounding suburbs, firefighters and local authorities said.

Authorities have sent alerts to mobile phones of residents of the affected area, warning them to "be ready to follow instructions," but had not issued any evacuation orders.

"No one is in danger," a spokesman for the firefighters, Vassilis Vathrakoyannis, told Skai radio.

Earlier, the mayor of the town of Dionysos told the same station that "the fire is out of control" while his counterpart in the town of Penteli, Dimitra Kehaya, said that the blaze had spread across "several kilometres".

ERT public television interrupted its programming for live coverage of the fire, the fumes of which reached central Athens, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) away where temperatures hovered at 38 Celsius (100 Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.

Some 74 firefighters, backed by five helicopters and five planes equipped for dropping water were battling to contain the blaze, but their efforts were complicated by the 38 kilometre (24 mile) per hour winds.

Forest fires regularly erupt in Greece during the summer months, including around Mount Penteli.

In July 2018, 102 people died when a fire fed by winds off the mountain raced through the coastal town of Mati, near Athens, in the country's worst-ever toll from a forest inferno.