The European Union’s largest wildfire since the bloc started keeping records more than two decades ago showed no signs of abating Wednesday in northeastern Greece despite the efforts of a multinational firefighting force on the ground and a fleet of water-dropping aircraft. Now in its 12th day, the blaze that began near the port city of Alexandroupolis on August 19 joined with smaller fires to form an inferno that has decimated homes and vast tracts of land near the border with Turkiye.
The blaze led to the evacuations of thousands of people and was blamed for 20 of Greece’s 21 fire-related deaths last week. The 475 firefighters on the ground, backed by 11 planes and five helicopters, were trying to tame the flames now concentrated deep in the forest of the Dadia National Park. With around 81,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of land burned, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Emergency Management Service, the blaze is the largest single wildfire any member nation has experienced since the European Forest Fire Information System started keeping records in 2000.
Copernicus is the EU space program’s Earth observation component and uses satellite imagery to provide mapping data.
