Serres and Karditsa: three fire fronts in the afternoon

Three fire fronts kept firefighting forces in Serres and Karditsa busy at midday and in the afternoon of Thursday, August 20. The first broke out in Paralimnio, Serres, where the Fire Service’s Operations Centre was alerted at around 15:00 and mobilised 12 firefighters with 6 vehicles, with the Municipality of Emmanouil Papas assisting with water tankers. According to “Eleftheros Typos”, reeds and dry grass were burning, with no settlement threatened, and the fire was brought under partial control. A few hours later, a second front broke out in low vegetation in Nea Petra, Serres, where 21 firefighters, a ground unit from the 21st Special Forest Fire Unit, volunteers and 8 vehicles responded. In Marathea, Municipality of Palamas, Karditsa, a fire in farmland and forest broke out at around 14:00 and stopped being active within about twenty minutes.

In Karditsa, 18 firefighters, a ground unit from the 10th Special Forest Fire Unit, 6 vehicles and one helicopter responded, the latter carrying out water drops over the area. The terms used by the Fire Service have specific meanings and are not interchangeable: saying a fire has stopped being active means there is no longer a spreading front, while partial control indicates that part of the perimeter has been contained but the operation continues. In both cases, hours of monitoring follow, with forces staying at the scene to extinguish remaining hotspots and prevent flare-ups. The ground units of the Special Forest Fire Units handle extinguishing hotspots in spots vehicles cannot reach, while municipal water tankers cover resupply with water, especially in farmland far from water sources.

Both areas lie in low-lying, intensively farmed zones. The Municipality of Emmanouil Papas spreads across the Serres plain, one of the largest irrigated farming areas in Northern Greece, where embankments, irrigation canals and reed beds are interspersed among the fields. The Municipality of Palamas, similarly, lies in the Thessaly plain, in an area where crops alternate with smaller farmland and forest patches. On such terrain, a fire in dry grass can quickly cover distance with the wind, but can also be reached relatively easily by vehicles via the dense network of farm roads. The risk to local communities mainly concerns production: in August, fields are in or close to the harvest stage, while farm machinery, storage buildings and baled crop residue provide additional flammable material.

Arson Crime Investigation Units were mobilised to investigate the causes in both areas, with the Trikala unit taking on the Karditsa case. These units carry out an on-site inspection at the point of origin, gather field evidence, examine the direction of spread and any ignition sources, take statements and compile a case file, which is forwarded to the competent prosecutor’s office. The findings may point to negligence, a technical cause or intent, and until the process is complete, no version is considered established. The causes of the three fires have not been announced, nor has an estimate of the burned area, and no injury or damage to homes has been made known. Other fronts kept forces busy the same day, in forest in Laconia and on a mountain in Thesprotia.