Goldammer

The fire burning on the island of Rhodes for a seventh day highlights the weaknesses of Greece's firefighting and forest management.

There have been positive steps, such as transferring the forest management agencies from the Agriculture to the Environment Ministry, but even that process is slow-moving, experts say.

Plans for Greece's new civil protect mechanism appear to put too much emphasis on fighting fires rather than preventing them, warns Professor Johann Georg Goldammer, director of the Global Fire Monitoring Center based at Freiburg University and senior scientist at the Max Planck Society for Chemistry, Biogeochemistry Department, who was invited by the previous government to lead a special commi

A day after an independent committee of experts issued a damning report on the state's response to wildfires over the years, a retired fire service officer who compiled a separate report into last summer's disastrous fire in eastern Attica said the committee should have focused on the causes of the July blaze which killed 100 people.