ISTANBUL (AP) — Turkey faced a “very risky week” for wildfires, an official said Monday, as blazes across parts of southeast Europe and the Balkans damaged homes and led to a huge firefighting operation that included evacuations. Nearly 100 people face prosecution over the fires in Turkey.
Blazes erupted near Bursa, Turkey’s fourth-largest city, over the weekend.
A wildfire to the northeast of Bursa had been largely extinguished, but one to the south of the city continued, although its intensity had been “significantly reduced,” Forestry Minister Ibrahim Yumakli told reporters in Ankara.
He also said that a fire that has been burning for six days in Karabuk, in northwest Turkey, had also “been reduced in intensity,” and a blaze in Karamanmaras in the south had largely been brought under control.
A wildfire also erupted Monday in forests outside the western port city of Izmir, where 11 aircraft were helping ground-based fire units and residents battle the blaze.
“We are in a very risky week," Yumakli said of the wildfires.
Blaze in Greece
In Greece, firefighters raced to tackle a wildfire that broke out Monday near a university campus close to the center of Athens.
Water-dropping planes and helicopters buzzed over the city center as they headed to the wildfire near the National Technical University of Athens, located in foothills ringing the Greek capital.
In all, 11 planes and eight helicopters were reinforcing 110 firefighters on the ground, the fire department said. Police announced road closures in the area, including to the only highway that circles the city.
A waning fire on the island of Kythera, which lies south of the Peloponnese, was reinvigorated by strong winds. Over the weekend, the blaze burned through around 10% of the small island’s land mass, triggering the evacuation of several villages.
Bulgaria assisted by Turkish firefighters
A Turkish firefighting team of 22 personnel and five vehicles crossed the northern border Monday to assist Bulgarian crews fight a large fire near the village of Lesovo, which was evacuated.
The blaze was one of hundreds across Bulgaria, the most severe of which was near the southwestern village of Strumyani. The Interior Ministry described the fire as “extremely large” and “widespread,” leading to 200 firefighters being withdrawn because of the effects of high winds on the fire.
Several villages have been extensively damaged, with dozens of homes burned to the ground. By Monday, 269 fires had been extinguished in the previous 24 hours, the government said.
Other European Union countries have responded to Bulgaria’s requests for help, sending firefighting helicopters and planes.
In several instances, the cause of fires have been determined to be carelessness by people, such as open fires and discarded cigarettes.
Senior Interior Ministry official Miroslav Rashkov said that two people had been arrested for deliberately starting fires and would be prosecuted.
Volunteer firefighters killed
Turkey has been fighting severe wildfires since late June.
In Bursa, three volunteer firefighters were killed after their water tanker overturned, local news agency IHA reported. One died at the scene and the two others were pulled from the tanker and hospitalized but died late Sunday.
The volunteer crew from the province of Bolu was on its way to the village of Aglasan, northeast of Bursa, to combat a blaze when the vehicle fell into a ditch beside a rough forest track, the agency reported.
Separately, officials said earlier Sunday a firefighter died of a heart attack while battling a blaze. The fatalities brought the total deaths over the past month to 17, including 10 rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed Wednesday in a fire in the western city of Eskisehir.
The huge blazes around Bursa forced more than 3,500 people to flee their homes. While firefighting teams have contained the damage to a limited number of homes across affected areas in Turkey, vast tracts of forest have been turned to ash.
Unseasonably high temperatures, dry conditions and strong winds have been fueling the wildfires. Turkey and other parts of the eastern Mediterranean are experiencing record-breaking heat waves. The government had earlier declared disaster areas in two western provinces, Izmir and Bilecik.
Turkey battled at least 44 separate fires Sunday, Yumakli said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday that 99 suspects faced prosecution in relation to the wildfires.
Albania fires
In Albania, firefighters battled at least six separate wildfires Monday, the defense ministry said. Two weeks of blazes have ravaged thousands of hectares, or acres, of forest in the Balkan country.
The areas most at risk were in the northeast, where inaccessible mountain plateaus had water-dropping aircraft carrying out the bulk of the firefighting.
In the country’s southern region, overnight winds ignited blazes in the municipalities of Delvine and Konispol and in the Himare district on the Adriatic coast, which suffered wildfires last week.
Authorities said that at least a dozen people were arrested over the weekend over the wildfires.
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Elena Becatoros in Athens, Greece, Veselin Toshkov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this report.
