Greece wildfires rage near Athens as western Europe threat eases

Gale-force winds drove flames through a seaside resort in Greece on Saturday, forcing hundreds to flee by sea and hampering firefighting aircraft as wildfires burned across multiple areas near Athens. The emergency had eased across much of western Europe, but the most dangerous front had shifted east again.

In southwestern France, firefighters contained a vast wildfire and nearly 200,000 people were allowed to return home after what may have been the country’s largest peacetime evacuation. French officials had already ordered the evacuation of almost 60,000 people near Bordeaux, pushing the total number told to flee fires in France and Spain past 220,000, and the French military was mobilized to help as the blaze weakened.

Greece faced a different phase of the same crisis. Firefighters, police and ambulances were seen retreating from a waterfront area as flames spread, while crews battled blazes in coastal and inland areas around Athens. Heavy winds were driving the fire behavior, making air drops harder and leaving emergency responders to manage fast-moving evacuations along the coast.

The scale of the danger carries grim history for Greece. The memory of the July 23, 2018 wildfire in Mati, east of Athens, remains raw because 104 people died there in one of the country’s deadliest modern wildfires. In 2024, an Athens court convicted six people over their role in the response to that disaster, a judgment that underscored how badly evacuation, coordination and communication can fail when flames outrun warnings.

That history helps explain the intensity of the response now, even as fire fronts shift from one country to another. France moved from mass evacuation to a phased return home in southwestern towns, while Greece confronted a live emergency near its capital, with sea evacuations and aircraft grounded by wind. Across the Mediterranean, the pattern is the same: when one front cools, another can ignite before communities have finished reckoning with the last one.