Firefighters in Greece struggle to save coastal resort as winds rage

ATHENS, Greece — Hundreds of firefighters in Greece on Saturday were battling to save a popular coastal resort northwest of Athens as violent winds continued to lash the country, hampering operations.

The fire department said over 300 firefighters were operating in the area of Porto Germeno, some 70 kilometers (45 miles) northwest of Athens in the region of Viotia.

“The fire has reached the sea… homes have certainly been damaged,” a fire department spokesman told AFP.

“The winds are very strong. Aircraft are trying to operate as best they can, but some are unable to and have been transferred to another fire (in the Peloponnese) where conditions are milder,” he added.

The fire broke out Friday near the neighboring coastal village of Agios Vasileios. Residents initially ignored a civil protection call to evacuate, and some 300 people had to be rescued by sea.

Theodore Giannaros, a wildfire meteorologist and senior researcher at the National Observatory of Athens, said on Saturday that the damage to the Porto Germeno area was “inconceivable.”

????????????Fire Greece Porto Germeno Attica – Meteology Live App pic.twitter.com/eljgilorwc

— Meteology Live (@AppMeteology) August 1, 2026

“The area that has been affected appears to exceed 4-5,000 hectares,” he said in a Facebook post.

Wildfires have flared in several parts of the country this week, including on the popular island of Crete, and three firefighters have so far lost their lives.

On Friday, another fire threatened the suburb of Haidari, west of Athens, which had to be partly evacuated.

A maximum fire risk alert has been issued for Saturday in the greater Athens area, parts of the Peloponnese and Crete, central Greece and the border region with Turkey.

Greece’s geography, with its hundreds of islands, complicates the rapid deployment of emergency responders.

Hit hard by the climate crisis like the rest of the Mediterranean region, the country is plagued by wildfires every summer due to high temperatures, frequent heat waves, and drought.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned on Thursday that Greece — which had been relatively spared from heat waves and major fires earlier this summer, unlike France and Spain — was headed for “difficult days.”

The war with Iran has been draining for all of us in Israel. But when I heard about a high casualty incident – ballistic missile impacts in Arad and Dimona that left nearly 200 people wounded – I drank a cup of coffee, packed a bag, and headed south.

There, I spoke with Shilgit, the head of an after-school program for underprivileged youth. Standing outside her destroyed center, Shilgit said it was a miracle that no children were hurt and spoke about the community coming together in the hours since.

As a Times of Israel reporter, I’m committed to telling stories of resilience like Shilgit’s. But my colleagues and I can't do this alone. If you value work like this, please consider joining our reader support group, The Times of Israel Community. Your financial support is essential to keep real human reporting like this going.

— Stav Levaton, military reporter

We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.

That’s why we started the Times of Israel – to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.

So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.

For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.

Thank you, David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel