The China Mail - Greeks count cost of wildfire 'tragedy' near Athens

A howling wind ripped through the settlement on Saturday, spread dust and the bitter smell of ash coming from the surrounding hills, where fires and smouldering embers continued to burn.

The ground shuddered as low-flying helicopters and water bombers weaved through the steep terrain to release water onto the remaining blazes and retrieve sea water.

Hours earlier, over 200 firefighters had battled to keep the fire that erupted in the rural region of Keratea, some 43 kilometres (27 miles) southeast of Athens, from threatening the coastal resorts dotting the coast of Attica.

At one gutted home -- its caved-in roof nothing more than a tangle of warped metal -- mask-wearing residents returned to retrieve whatever belongings survived the inferno.

A despondent woman named Dimitria was more fortunate: the flames spared her home but razed the nearest forest, leaving it a desolate terrain of roasted trees and ash.

"From yesterday night, there were very few reinforcements from the fire brigade," she lamented, describing how help arrived after the advancing fire threatened "many houses" near the forest.

"My house is OK, but my forest is burned. And that is the pity," she said with a trembling voice, her eyes welling up as she left to survey the damage.

Firefighters with hoses combed through a copse of trees to douse any embers and prevent reactivations, scorched twigs and debris crunching under their boots.

- 'We knew it was dangerous' -

Observing them from his unscathed house was a relieved Kostas Triadis.

Despite the damage dealt to the landscape, he hailed the work of firemen and volunteers, "otherwise it would be very bad."

"It is regenerated by itself, I hope it will be the natural future," the 75-year-old added, referring to the devastated vegetation.

"It is a very good, small forest, we always knew it was dangerous."

His wife Eleni, 71, added that "everybody did their utmost to save the area, but the real tragedy is that the forest is lost. It was very old."

But she pointed to the many trees that were relatively unharmed because the fire burned itself out quickly in the short grass that residents had cut in June.

"It's a tragedy, it's the first time the fire has come here," she said of the area, where the couple spend the summer months away from their Athens residence.

A short distance away on the coast, the contrast could not be starker: beachgoers ambled on the sand and swam in the shimmering Mediterranean on a seemingly normal balmy summer morning.

But the signs of the emergency were unmistakeable as beachside diners were greeted with the spectacle of water bombers skimming the water to refill and return to the raging fires.

C.Smith--ThChM