Adapting to a new fire-prone reality

Valentini Papaioannou did not know what to expect as she returned to her home in Palaia Penteli, northeast of Athens, on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 13. Everything had happened so fast when she'd left it 30 hours earlier with her husband and their 2-year-old son, running away from a wildfire that had spread onto their street. In those panicked moments, she knew that the deja vu she was experiencing was inevitable: She was born and grew up in Thrakomakedones, another Athens suburb that is vulnerable to forest fires because of its location in the foothills of Mount Parnitha. Her family holiday home just a few kilometers further north in Kalamos, meanwhile, had narrowly escaped destruction by a big wildfire in 2017, and it wasn't the first time.

"I don't know if fires are chasing me, or I'm chasing them," she says, only half-joking.

"What I do know is that growing...