In Greece, wildfires kill dozens in deadliest blazes in years

ATHENS, Greece — Fast-moving wildfires near Athens have killed at least 49 people, officials said Tuesday, and have forced thousands of tourists and residents to flee any way they could, with some even taking to rickety boats to escape.

Gale-force winds topping 50 mph have fanned a pair of fires that tore through seaside areas popular with travelers, injuring at least 156 people and leaving a trail of charred resorts, burned-out cars and smoldering farms in their wake. Many evacuation routes were blocked and people who did manage to escape by road had to drive through choking smoke, sometimes with walls of flame leaping through trees just yards away.

Greece’s emergency services were stretched to capacity as more than 600 firefighters and 250 fire engines were deployed to the sites of the two largest fires, in and around Rafina, about 15 miles east of Athens, and Kineta, about 30 miles west of the capital. The country’s entire fleet of water-dropping aircraft was deployed Monday and officials called on their partners in the European Union for help.

Europe has sweltered through an unusually hot and dry summer, breaking temperature records and fueling significant fires in several countries, including Sweden and Britain.

In Greece, blazes have consumed entire towns, locals said, and officials warned that the death toll would rise as emergency workers cleared burned homes and cars in which some evacuees had become trapped.

“Unfortunately, at this stage, we do not expect to find more people injured, only more dead,” said Miltiades Milonas, vice president of the Greek ambulance service.

The president of the Hellenic Red Cross, Nikos Economopoulos, said that 26 of the dead had been found in a field near the seaside town of Mati, near Rafina. Some were locked in embrace, he told Greek state television.

“Mati doesn’t even exist as a settlement anymore,” a resident told Skai TV. “I saw corpses, burned-out cars. I feel lucky to be alive.”

Roads into Athens were choked by residents trying to flee, hampering rescuers’ efforts to reach the fires. Penned in by the flames, some looked to the sea to escape, hitching rides on passing fishing boats or resorting to makeshift rafts before the coast guard began an organized evacuation.

Escaping by sea, however, posed its own deadly challenge: The coast guard said it recovered the bodies of at least four evacuees.

Twelve coast guard vessels, aided by about 30 private boats, rescued 710 people who were trapped in Mati and nearby Kokkino Limanaki, and pulled dozens of others from the sea, according to the deputy shipping minister, Nektarios Santorinios. Some were housed at the Rafina municipal gymnasium and others were bused to Athens.

Greek television channels aired the dramatic escape tales of survivors. The former leader of the country’s Communist Party, Aleka Papariga, who was vacationing in Mati, said she got out “just in time.” She said that the field where the blaze broke out was flanked by rocks and a precipice, limiting the avenues for escape.

On Monday, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras cut short an official visit to Bosnia.

“It’s a difficult night for Greece,” Tsipras said. “We are dealing with something completely asymmetric.”

Wildfires are an annual occurrence in Greece, but a drought and a recent heat wave, with temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), have helped make this the country’s deadliest fire season in more than a decade. Sixty people were killed in a 2007 blaze that swept through the country’s Peloponnese region.

The fires have so far skirted Athens, leaving the city’s ancient ruins unscathed. A blaze could, however, be seen from the capital. Bits of ash fell on the city and a pall of smoke darkened the skies.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.