Due to the hot summer weather, several large wildfires broke out in several places in Greece, especially in Attica, the area around Athens, the Peloponnese and the islands of Rhodes, Evia (Euboia) and Corfu. From Monday 17 July until 24 July 2023, 13,000 ha were affected in Rhodes alone; 19,000 locals and tourists were evacuated. 11 people suffered minor injuries.
On 18 July, Greece requested assistance through the Mechanism (UPCM) in the form of 2 aerial forest fire fighting modules and 3 ground forest fire fighting modules. On 20 and 21 July, 3 more aerial means and 2 more ground teams were additionally requested. Canadair planes from France and Italy were deployed to the affected locations, after a few days these planes were supplemented and replaced by aircraft from Croatia and Cyprus. As of 24 July, the planes have made more than 300 drops.
For the 2023 wildfire season, the European Commission co-financed the stand-by availability of rescEU aerial forest fire-fighting capacities to address potential shortcomings in responding to fires. Ground teams from Bulgaria, Malta and Romania also intervened on site, in cooperation with ground modules from Bulgaria, Romania, Poland and Slovakia.
On the night of July 23 to 24, two liaison officers for the MoI-DG FRS CR (one of the LO already had previous experience with wildfires in this area in 2021) were also deployed to Greece, to monitor the situation there and, if necessary, ensure the coordination of assistance from Czech Republic - our team was ready to be deployed (see article on the website hzscr.cz).
In addition to monitoring the situation, the liaison officers in Rhodes provided psychological support to the affected persons during the first day, maintained contact with the Greek firefighters and the Slovak GFFF module, with delegates from travel agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy and the Honorary Consul of the Czech Republic, and ensured the flow of information during repatriation in cooperation with the crisis intervention team on site. They returned to the Czech Republic on 28 July 2023 in the evening.
Foto: Jiří Kubeš
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