Forest fires edge closer to Athens

ATHENS, Aug 29 (AFP): With the smell still lingering in its suburbs after Greece's worst wildfire this year, floods and pollution now threaten Athens, experts say.
Thousands were forced to flee their homes as the massive blaze raged out of control for three days towards the capital earlier this month, swallowing up houses and cars and killing one woman.
Fanned by strong winds, the inferno that began at Varnavas, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northeast of Athens, reached suburbs at the foot of Mount Penteli, devastating some 10,000 hectares (24,700 acres).
With more than a third of the Mediterranean country's population of 10 million crammed into the capital's region of Attica, and the fires edging closer and closer to the city, experts are warning that the situation is becoming critical.
The National Observatory says 37 percent of forests around Athens have been consumed by fire over the past eight years alone.
"Attica has lost most of its forest, and now there is imminent danger for the people of Athens, in terms of polluted environment and risk of flooding" from soil erosion, said Alexandros Dimitrakopoulos, of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
"Where 100 years ago there were vigorous forests of pines, now forest vegetation is of weak and low pines and evergreen shrubs," the professor of forest fire science told AFP.