Within minutes of receiving an assistance request from Greece for help in fighting forest fires the European Commission activated its civil protection network. Within two hours of the request Italy, France and Portugal had offered a total of 5 Canadair fire-fighting aircraft.
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: "The assistance offered by these Member States is a most powerful demonstration of European cooperation and solidarity in times of need."
Early in the evening of 27 June 2007, Greece requested civil protection assistance from its European partners. The request triggered a rapid reaction from the European Commission's Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC). The MIC immediately alerted the civil protection authorities of the 30 countries participating in the Community Civil Protection Mechanism.
Fires affect all parts of Greece
Some 120 forest and wildfires are raging throughout Greece with the most affected regions of Thessaly, Sterea Ellada, Attica, the Peloponnese, and the West. These fires are the result of extremely hot and dry weather conditions and strong winds. On Wednesday 27 June 2007 at 18.00 the European Community Civil Protection Mechanism (MIC) received a request from Greece for fire-fighting water-carrying aircraft and helicopters. Within minutes the MIC forwarded the call for assistance to its network of civil protection authorities in the 27 Member States and the three other countries participating in the Mechanism (Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway). This is the first such request by Greece.
Within a few hours of the request several countries had already offered Greece assistance:
Italy: 2 Canadair CL 415 aircraft. The Italian aircraft are on their way. Two technicians of the Italian Civil Protection Department were sent to Greece on the night of the request to coordinate on-the-ground needs with local authorities.
France: 2 Canadair CL 415 water bomber aircraft. Departure was scheduled for this morning.
Portugal: The upcoming holder of the EU Presidency offered one Canadair CL-215 aircraft. The plane will be ready for departure as of 29 June and estimated to arrive in Greece by that same evening
Greece has accepted all offers of assistance. The EU’s intervention in Greece builds on experience gained from a broad range of previous disasters, including forest fires in France, Spain and Portugal.
The Community Mechanism for Civil Protection Since its creation, the Mechanism has been activated for a number of disasters worldwide, including the 2003 earthquake in Iran; the 2004 tsunami affected South East Asia; the 2005 forest fires in Portugal, flooding in Bulgaria and Romania, Hurricane Katrina in the US and the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, the Lebanon crisis in 2006 and more recently in Bolivia's floods.
Greek forest fires under control
Greek firefighters say blazes which have ravaged forests around Greece over the past four days have been brought under control, though the country remains under a fire alert.
A spokesman from the fire service says at least 2,500 hectares of pine forest have gone up in smoke in the Mount Parnithia National Park in the northwest suburbs of Athens, where firefighters were still containing a few remaining hot spots.
A prosecutor also arrived at the park as part of an investigation into what triggered the blaze that has devastated one of the last big green spaces near the densely-populated, polluted Greek capital.
President Carolos Papoulias said the "nation was mourning" the destruction to the nature park and called on the Government to commit to a national policy for the environment.
Firefighters have contained major blazes in Thassalia in central Greece, which claimed two lives last week, and were putting out the last vestiges of a blaze in the popular tourist destination of Pelion in the northeast of the country.