Both crew members aboard one of two firefighting helicopters that collided in Greece have died, the country’s fire service said.
The two crew members from the other helicopter were rescued alive, officials said.
The leased Bell helicopters crashed into each other while battling a wildfire near Psatha, west of Athens, according to the fire service.
“Search and rescue teams were immediately mobilised to locate and assist the crews,” it said.
Television footage appeared to show the helicopters’ rotors colliding before one aircraft erupted in flames and spiralled to the ground.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said earlier that Greece was facing “extreme weather conditions”, with winds reaching 100 kilometres an hour.
“When the winds blow with such force, even the dozens of aircraft we have at our disposal cannot operate safely,” he wrote on Facebook.
Watch: Firefighting helicopters collide over Greece as crews battle wildfires
Almost 500 firefighters were deployed around Porto Germeno, a popular coastal village about 70 kilometres northwest of Athens, the fire department said.
The crews were working to prevent the flames from reaching Athens’s western outskirts after the fire crossed a mountain overnight.
Another 100 firefighters were tackling a separate blaze in Aigialia, in the northern Peloponnese.
Late yesterday, a fresh fire erupted on Cephalonia, a popular holiday island in the Ionian Sea.
Almost 500 firefighters were battling blazes around the popular coastal village
A 44-year-old man was arrested on Sunday in Cephalonia on suspicion of intentionally starting the fire, Greece’s ANA news agency reported.
Early estimates from the National Observatory’s climate tracker meteo.gr suggested that separate fires around the Gulf of Corinth, including the blaze that swept through Porto Germeno, had burned more than 6,500 hectares.
The tracker said conditions remained unfavourable, “mainly due to strong northerly winds, which, however, have partially weakened compared to previous days”.
‘Is anyone there?’
Porto Germeno and nearby villages were evacuated after the fire began on Friday, while local authorities said dozens of homes had been damaged or destroyed.
“We could not believe what we were seeing, the fire spread extremely rapidly,” Nikos Georgopoulos, from the laboratory of forest management at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, told state broadcaster ERT.
Video released by Greek police showed officers moving through Agios Nektarios, near Porto Germeno, as they evacuated residents ahead of the advancing flames.
Riding motorcycles through the village, officers sounded sirens, knocked on doors and shouted: “Is anyone there?”
Images showed firefighters confronting walls of flame and huge columns of smoke, with local volunteers joining the effort to contain the fire.
A firefighting helicopter battles a wildfire burning near Porto Germeno
Minas Tsotdanis, a farmer whose home was destroyed, said more than a dozen houses had been lost in the village.
“Even if my home had been spared, all I would see would be this: a burned forest,” he said as he watched the fire anxiously.
‘Megafire’
Fires on Crete and Paros earlier this week affected a further 6,000 hectares, according to meteo.gr.
Theodore Giannaros, a wildfire meteorologist and senior researcher at the National Observatory, said the fires around Porto Germeno appeared to have covered more than 10,000 hectares — nearly twice the initial estimate.
“It is highly likely (if not almost certain) that this particular wildfire will be classified as a megafire,” Mr Giannaros wrote on Facebook.
Firefighters have been responding to dozens of fires each day. Greece’s Civil Protection Minister Evangelos Tournas said on Saturday that the fire department had been “pushed to its limits”.
Three firefighters have died in the line of duty in recent days: two in Crete and one in the Peloponnese.
Gale-force winds had produced “extremely difficult conditions”, with aircraft often unable to collect water or make drops because of severe turbulence, Mr Tournas said.
Although the winds weakened late yesterday, the greater Athens area, nearby Voiotia and the island of Evia faced near-maximum fire risk today, the civil protection ministry said.
Greece, like the rest of the Mediterranean, has been hit hard by the climate crisis and faces wildfires every summer amid soaring temperatures, repeated heatwaves and drought.
