Sparks from Greece’s ageing electricity network have been blamed for most of the land destroyed by wildfires in 2026, according to preliminary data from the country’s Arson Crimes Investigation Directorate.
Fires linked to the grid account for about 75 per cent of the area burned this year, the directorate found, even though power infrastructure is behind only a small share of ignitions.
The gap comes down to where and when those fires start. Much of the network runs overhead through fire-prone forest and emptying rural districts, and sparks in high winds can outrun firefighters.
Two deadly blazes in late July, one in western Attica and one on the island of Crete, were both linked to the network by fire brigade investigators. Together they destroyed more than 14,600 hectares and killed four people.
Elias Tziritis, wildfire coordinator at WWF Greece, said six out of 10 major fires in 2025 were caused by the network and accounted for 55 per cent of the area burned that year.
Much of the infrastructure dates from the 1960s, when overhead lines were the cheaper way to electrify the country. Investment then stalled during the debt crisis after 2009.
HEDNO, the distribution operator, rejects the claim that the grid is a leading cause of fires. It said about 1 per cent of vegetation fires recorded in 2025 were blamed on electricity networks, against roughly 3 per cent in the United States, and that being cast as the automatic culprit served neither the truth nor public protection.
Two HEDNO managers were arrested after the Crete fire and later released. In Boeotia, central Greece, investigators concluded that cables serving a private wind farm had thrown sparks into dry scrub, and three people were detained.
Greek energy minister Stavros Papastavrou said the Greek Government intended to tighten the rules for private energy projects. Experts warn that focusing on private operators obscures the state of the much larger public network.
Burying cables is the obvious remedy but a slow and costly one. The share of the distribution network laid underground has risen from 9 per cent in 2021 to about 14 per cent, financed in part through the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility.
Alexandra Sdoukou, spokeswoman for the governing New Democracy party, said burying the entire 120,000km medium-voltage network would cost about €35 billion ($41 billion), so work must begin in the areas most at risk.
Litigation is mounting. Lawsuits over grid-linked fires rose from 369 to 681 in 2024, according to Christos Kalogeropoulos, a retired fire service lieutenant general and former head of the arson directorate.
Wildfires across Europe have burned more than 500,000 hectares this year, causing up to €19.1 billion in damage, according to AccuWeather.
