Two aircrew have been killed after their firefighting helicopters collided in mid-air over a major wildfire west of Athens on August 2, the Hellenic Fire Service has confirmed.
A Danish pilot and a Greek coordinator died when their aircraft came down in flames near Psatha, in the Attica region. The British pilot and Greek coordinator aboard the second helicopter survived and landed safely.
Both leased Bell helicopters had taken off from Elefsina air base carrying two crew each. An investigation into the cause of the collision has begun.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the loss of the two men “fills us all with grief”.
The fire started on July 31 near the village of Agios Vasileios in southwest Boeotia, central Greece, before gale-force winds carried it into Attica. More than 100 homes have been destroyed and around 500 firefighters deployed.
Greece’s arson investigation directorate has identified a private network carrying electricity from wind turbines to the national grid as the point of origin, Kathimerini reported.
Vibration in the cabling is thought to have thrown sparks into dry scrub. An electrical engineer who signed off on the project and the contractor who built it have been arrested on suspicion of negligence, while the owner of the wind power company was still being sought.
Flames later reached a military firing range, setting off unexploded ordnance, while crews worked to keep the front away from Megara, a coastal town of about 30,000 people. Several settlements on the island of Kefalonia were evacuated after a separate blaze.
Three Greek firefighters were killed on July 29, two on Crete and one in the Peloponnese.
Six countries have so far activated the EU Civil Protection Mechanism for wildfires this summer, among them France. The European Forest Fire Information System put the area burned across the EU at more than 457,000 hectares by July 29.
