21,000 hectares burned
26 August 2009
Twenty-one thousand hectares of forest went up in smoke and 150 houses were destroyed in fires raging across the Greek region of Attica over the past few days, and the opposition has requested that Costas Karamanlis provide an explanation - while the press is predicting an imminent reshuffle.
This morning fire fighters have said that "no fires are active in Greece at the moment", and the government has announced a plan to replant forestland in Attica and impede any sort of speculation concerning the building sector, after accusations by communists who said that the blazes were a case of "organised arson". Also, compensation has been promised for economic losses suffered.
The main opposition party, the Socialist PASOK, has harshly attacked the centre-right government, joining the ranks of the rest of the opposition and calling the fires "a preventable catastrophe". The press continues to ask for an explanation. "Ministers, you have also been burnt" was the headline on today's left-wing daily Elephterotypia, alluding to recurrent speculation - which was strengthened after the fires - on a government reshuffle.
The conservative paper Kathimerini, instead, explicitly forecast a reshuffle before the international exhibition in Thessaloniki, set to get underway on September 5 and to be inaugurated by Karamanlis.
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