Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, warned on Monday that Greece is suffering its ‘worst heatwave since 1987,’ which claimed more than 1,000 lives.
Temperatures reached 45 degrees in inland areas of Greece and are expected to remain high for most of the week.
Speaking during a meeting at a power management center, Mitsotakis called on his fellow citizens to help the country out in its hour of need and conserve their power.
“Everything humanly possible has been done to secure the country’s power supply. But we are also asking consumers to help us,” Mitsotakis said at the event.
READ MORE: Wildfires wreck havoc across Greek villages.
Authorities have asked citizens to minimise power usage at peak times, notably in the afternoon and evening, in order to prevent the electricity grid from being over-burdened.
The intense heat has helped fan wildfires that have destroyed more than 3,000 hectares of pine and olive groves in the country’s west since Saturday.
Deputy Civil Protection Minister, Nikos Hardalias, said there had been 1,584 fires across Greece in July compared to 953 in 2019, and there had been 116 new blazes in just the last 24 hours.
“We are no longer talking about climate change but about a climate threat,” Hardalias told Star TV.
The fire near Patras was not fully under control on Monday, with five villages and a seaside town already evacuated. Eight people have also been hospitalised with burns and respiratory problems.
READ MORE: Wildfire in western Greece forces village, beach evacuations.
The fire service on Monday also ordered the precautionary evacuation of a village in the southwestern Peloponnese as it battled a wildfire near Vassilitsi, in the Pylos-Nestor municipality in the region of Messinia.
Officials were optimistic, however, that a fire on the island of Rhodes, near the Turkish coast, was on the back foot after more firefighters and resources were deployed overnight.
READ MORE: Massive fire rips through Rhodes, leaves much of the island without power and water.
“Dawn finds Rhodes much better than the day before,” South Aegean Governor, George Hatzimarkos, said in a statement.
He added that the fire fronts were receding and “almost under control.”
Source: RT.
