A convoy of Czech firefighters and emergency rescuers, consisting of 40 vehicles including nine tankers, set off from Podivin to Athens at midday today to help fight the forest fires currently threatening the Greek capital, said Martin Kavka, spokesperson for the Czech fire service.
The team comprises 64 firefighters, seven rescuers and four technicians.
The convoy will pass through Hungary, Serbia and North Macedonia, and is expected to arrive in Athens on Wednesday evening.
The Greek authorities have said that there is sufficient aerial equipment, so only ground troops from the Czech Republic have been dispatched.
“Forest fires are specific in that they usually take place in inaccessible terrain,” Adam Tvrdik, from the fire station in Zruc nad Sazavou, central Bohemia, told CTK. “We are therefore equipped for a difficult march and a long-term intervention. It is important to have lighter equipment, including firefighting bags on our backs, and we have four-wheelers with a pump and a 300-litre tank.”
The current team will be on site for ten days, at which point it will be replaced by a second team.
Czech firefighters helped to eliminate fires in North Macedonia in early August and in Bulgaria in July. They helped extinguish a fire in the northeast of Greece last year.
In August 2023, Greece was hit by the largest fire seen in Europe since 2000. About 600 foreign firefighters helped fight it, including a Czech team of 148 people: 119 firefighters, 14 paramedics, a Black Hawk helicopter crew and service technicians and mechanics. The ground team was on site from 24 August with one rotation for three weeks, and the air team assisted with the firefighting in Greece for nine days.
More than 700 firefighters, three dozen helicopters and firefighting planes are fighting the current wildfire, which started on Sunday and is now approaching Athens. So far, 45 settlements, villages and neighbourhoods have been evacuated, including several hospitals. Among the latest areas to be evacuated is the seafront district of Nea Makri.
The first victim was found in a burnt-out house in Chalandri.
