Flying boats

The wildfires raging on the islands of Rhodes, Evia, Corfu and several locations in mainland Greece caused the first human casualties Tuesday.

Two Greek Air Force pilots died on the island of Evia when a Canadair CL-215 firefighting plane crashed near the town of Karystos shortly after 2 p.m., an Air Force spokesman announced.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the Fire Service's special aerial operations units at the Elefsina Air Base, the 383rd Special Operations & Air Firefighting Squadron, and the 355th Tactical Transport Squadron on Saturday to express his support for the crews fighting to contain numerous wildfires that have ravaged areas in Attica over the past week amid scorching temperatures. 

Cyprus and Croatia are to deploy firefighting aircraft to Greece through the EU-wide Civil Protection Mechanism, following an additional request from the General Secretariat of Civil Protection, to help battle wildfires that have intensified as the Kleon heat wave continues.

Cyprus has provided two Air Tractors and Croatia one CL-415 from the rescEU fleet of firefighting planes.

The aircraft managed to eventually land

Beriev-200 came to the rescue

Eight new CL-515 will be bought and the eight existing CL-415 will be upgraded to the CL-515 standard as well

A senior Turkish official is due to travel to Russia on Sept. 9 to examine Russian Beriev BE-200 firefighter planes and start official talks on the potential purchase of these aircraft if they meet Turkish conditions.

Greece will participate in a new European Union program aimed at enlisting the help of member-states to respond to wildfires and other natural disasters, the country's General Secretariat for Civil Protection said on Tuesday.
Last month, the European Commission inaugurated its first fleet of firefighting aircraft under a new program dubbed rescEU without the participation of Greece.

Conservative New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Wednesday visited the Canadair base in Elefsina, western Attica, and thanked the firefighters he met there for their efforts to douse last week's catastrophic blazes.

By Yiannis Papadopoulos