One Dead as Greek Wildfire Eases in Athens Suburbs

A burned house is seen in Chalandri, suburb of Athens, on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
A burned house is seen in Chalandri, suburb of Athens, on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
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One Dead as Greek Wildfire Eases in Athens Suburbs

A burned house is seen in Chalandri, suburb of Athens, on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)
A burned house is seen in Chalandri, suburb of Athens, on Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Michael Varaklas)

Greece's worst wildfire of the year killed one woman and continued to burn on the outskirts of the capital Athens on Tuesday, although lighter winds and firefighting efforts helped reduce its intensity, authorities said.
Hundreds of firefighters backed by six waterbombing aircraft battled the blaze that broke out on Sunday near the village of Varnavas 35 km (20 miles) north of Athens, Reuters reported.
Stoked by gale-force winds, the blaze leapt from a wooded, hilly area into the suburbs on Monday, torching homes and stirring panic in neighborhoods that had not seen such a fire so close to the center in decades.
It reached Vrilissia, around 14 km (8 miles) from central Athens, a day ago, where a 64-year-woman was found dead inside a factory, witnesses said on Tuesday.
"Thirty-five years living here, a fire had never reached this area," said Meletis Makris, a 65-year-old pensioner in Vrilissia.
The cause of the wildfire was not yet determined.
Pockets of fire remained around northern Athens, but the fierce blazes seen on Monday had subsided and the thick smoke that covered central Athens had mostly lifted.
"There is no active front, but scattered outbreaks," Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said in a televised statement.
However, gales were expected to pick up again later on Tuesday and the country will remain on high fire alert until Thursday, with strong winds and temperatures forecast to reach up to 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
"The overall picture looks improved but there are still many fronts in various areas," said a fire brigade official.
Wildfires have been a common feature of Greek summers for years - its deadliest wildfire killed 104 people in the seaside town of Mati, near the capital, in 2018. But climate change has brought hotter weather and less rain, ideal conditions for large-scale fires.
The southern European country experienced its warmest winter on record this year and was on track for its hottest summer, with scant rain in many areas for months.
"The wildfire had all the characteristics that we, as firefighters, don't want a forest fire to have. A combination of hot, dry and windy (conditions)," Nikos Lavranos, head of the Greek federation of fire service employees, told Greek TV.
"It was extremely aggressive, difficult to manage and unpredictable," he said.
The heatwave in Greece was mirrored across southern Europe, including in Spain and the Balkans.
"NOTHING LEFT"
Residents and firefighters were able to return to some areas of northern Athens on Tuesday to assess the damage -- kitchens and living rooms blackened by fire, ceilings caved in, cars reduced to sooty frames.
Local newspaper Proto Thema said the damage spanned 100 square kilometers (39 square miles) and included 100 homes.
"My house was utterly destroyed, even the walls fell down. There's nothing left," said Sakis Morfis, 70, a Vrilissia resident.
"There is nothing left. There's no morale, no courage, there's no money anymore, everything was destroyed... The only thing I cared about was saving my dogs, so I left everything (else) behind."
Greece has activated the European Civil protection mechanism and is expecting assistance from France, Italy and the Czech Republic with aircraft and firefighters. Spain and Türkiye have also offered help.
More than 30 areas were forced to evacuate, along with at least three hospitals, with power cuts in parts of the wider Athens region. Passenger ferries heading to the port of Rafina northeast of the capital were diverted.
Police have helped evacuate more than 250 people, and some residents spent the night in shelters.



Trump, Harris Clash in Fiery Presidential Debate 

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
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Trump, Harris Clash in Fiery Presidential Debate 

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris (R) shakes hands with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (AFP)

Kamala Harris savaged Donald Trump as "extreme" and the friend of dictators, while the Republican branded her a "Marxist" in a bitter televised debate Tuesday that poured fuel on an already explosive US presidential election.

On hot-button issues ranging from abortion and race to the fate of US democracy, the two held their first -- and possibly only -- debate ahead of the November 5 election, with each hoping for a breakthrough in an agonizingly close race.

Trump, who only a few weeks ago had believed himself to be cruising to victory, reacted to pressure from Harris by raising his voice and resorting to the kinds of colorful invective and often meandering insults that he uses at his rallies.

Harris, 59, responded by looking on in amusement, then clearly got under his skin, declaring that she represents a fresh start after the "mess" of the Trump presidency -- and saying: "We're not going back."

The ABC News debate began when the Democratic vice president unexpectedly approached the Republican former president to shake his hand, before they took to their lecterns in the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Then the niceties ended.

Within minutes, 78-year-old Trump called her a "Marxist" and also falsely claimed that she and President Joe Biden had allowed "millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums."

Harris pointed out that Trump is a convicted felon, called him "extreme" and said it is "a tragedy" that throughout his career he had used "race to divide the American people."

One of their most jarring exchanges was on Trump's unprecedented refusal to accept losing to Biden in the 2020 election, before trying to overturn the result.

In front of the audience expected to run into the tens of millions of voters, Trump doubled down, insisting there is "so much proof" that he really won.

Harris turned to Trump and said that his own former security officials in the White House have called him a "disgrace."

"World leaders are laughing at Donald Trump," she said.

Trump would "give up" Ukraine to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, "a dictator who would eat you for lunch," she charged. "Dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again."

Another intense exchange was on abortion.

Trump insisted that while having pushed for the end of the federal right to abortion, he wanted individual states to make their own policy.

Harris said he was telling a "bunch of lies" and called his policies "insulting to the women of America."

- Harris mocks Trump rallies -

The last presidential debate in June doomed Biden's reelection campaign, after he delivered a catastrophic performance against Trump. Harris took over as nominee amid Democratic fears that Biden was too old and infirm to defeat the scandal-plagued Republican.

Harris has earned a reputation in past debates and while serving as a US senator for ice-cold put-downs and tough questions.

Her five days of intensive preparation appeared to pay off against Trump, perhaps the most brutal public speaker in American politics.

Trump has long defied political gravity by seeming invulnerable to usual attacks.

He has been convicted of falsifying business records to cover up an affair with an adult film star, found liable for sexual abuse, and faces trial on charges of trying to overturn the 2020 election.

But Harris clearly needled him on one of his favorite, if less serious topics -- his trademark rallies.

Attendees, she said, prompting an angry retort, were leaving early out of "exhaustion and boredom."

At another moment where Trump appeared to be losing his cool, he talked at length about a debunked conspiracy theory that Haitian immigrants have been eating local people's pets in Ohio.

"They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats," he said before being corrected by the ABC News moderator that the authorities in the town of Springfield have said this did not happen.

With only 56 days left before the election, the intense spotlight was a rare opportunity for both candidates to shift the balance in what polls show is an almost evenly split contest.

And the debate was a key chance for Harris to introduce herself to more voters after only jumping into the race less than eight weeks ago, when 81-year-old Biden abruptly quit.