ATHENS — Scores of Greek villagers were evacuated early Thursday as a forest fire raged overnight around the protected wildlife habitat of Mount Geraneia, the fire department said, with no injuries immediately reported. Six villages and two monasteries were evacuated after the fire broke out on Wednesday evening near the village of Skinos on the Gulf of Corinth, some 90 kilometers (56 miles) west of Athens, a spokesman told AFP. Many locals have summer homes in the area, but lives are not in immediate threat, fire officials said. “This is the first major fire of 2021… communities have been evacuated as a precaution,” fire department spokesman Vassilis Vathrakogiannis had earlier told Skai. In 2018, 102 people died in the coastal resort of Mati, near Athens, in Greece’s worst fire disaster.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer May 20, 2021 08:14 UTC