Jul 26, 2018
The deadly fires in Greece
reflect the vulnerability caused by decades of irresponsible, unregulated
development. Still, over the course of the last ten years, Greece has lost many
more people to the tragedy caused by the EU establishment than to any flood or
wildfire.
ATHENS – A biblical calamity
befell Attica last Monday. I saw its first sign in the late morning at Athens
airport, where I was seeing off my daughter to Australia. A strong whiff of
burning wood caused me to look up to the sky, where a whitish-yellow sun beckoned,
surrounded by the telltale eclipse-like daytime darkness that only thick,
sky-high smoke can cause.
By the early evening, the news
began cascading in. Many of our friends’ and some of our relatives’ houses in
East Attica were destroyed. Forest fires had run amok, spreading toward the
heavily built-up coastline, cutting the settlement of Mati and the town of
Rafina off from Athens and forcing residents to flee toward the sea.
I first learned of casualties
when told of the plight of activists belonging to our political movement,
DiEM25. The flames destroyed their house in Mati, along with every other house
on their street; but at least they escaped with their lives. Barely. Their
next-door neighbors perished; when their corpses were discovered the next
morning, they were crouched together, their three-year-old girl in the middle
of a heartbreaking huddle.
And the ominous news continued
to stream in. A friend and her husband, whose house is in smithereens, are
missing. A cousin, whose house sits on a cliff by the sea, had to jump 70
meters into the rocky waters below as his house burned down; fortunately, he
was rescued by fishermen. But 26 other people, who had come very close to the
same coastline, succumbed to the smoke and flames before they could reach the
water. As I write, the official death toll stands at 81, with an indeterminate
number of people missing. Words fail me.
Why did it happen? A dry
winter had produced large quantities of parched forest and bush, which, on a
day when temperatures reached 39ºCelsius (102º Fahrenheit) and winds gusted at
130 kilometers (80 miles) per hour, fueled the conflagration. But on this, our
Black Monday, the weather conspired with the chronic failures of Greece’s state
and society to turn a wildfire into a lethal inferno.
Greece’s post-war economic
model relied on anarchic, unplanned real-estate development anywhere and
everywhere (including ravines and pine forests). That has left us, like any
developing country, vulnerable to deadly forest fires in the summer and flash
floods in winter (just last winter, 20 people died in houses built on the bed of an
ancient creek).
That collective failure is,
naturally, aided and abetted by the Greek state’s perpetual lack of
preparedness: its failure to clear fields and forests of accumulated kindling
during the winter and spring, for example, or to establish and maintain emergency escape routes for
residents. Then there are the usual crimes of oligarchy, such as the illegal
enclosure of the coast around seaside villas for the purpose of privatizing the
beach. Eyewitnesses I spoke to said that many died or were badly injured
struggling against the barbed wire that the rich had put between them and the
sea.
And, last but not least, there
is also humanity’s collective guilt. This catastrophe demonstrates nothing if
not the manner in which rapid climate change is turbocharging the natural
phenomena that punish our human foibles.
As is often the case when
forest fires ravage Greece, the government hinted at arson. While I cannot rule
out the possibility of foul play, I am unconvinced. Greek governments have
traditionally found it convenient to blame profiteers, arsonists, terrorists,
and even foreign agents. With such incendiary claims dominating the news,
officials avoid having to admit their lack of preparedness and their failure to
adopt and enforce appropriate laws and safety regulations.
What role did austerity and
Greece’s ongoing Great Depression play in the ineffectiveness of the response?
Fire departments, citizens’ protection agencies, ambulance services, and
hospitals are terribly understaffed. While the fires would not have been
stopped if we had three times the number of fire brigade workers and
firefighting airplanes, a country suffering a decade-long diminution of its
public services, its communities, and its morale can scarcely be expected to
prepare itself well for a calamity made worse by climate change.
Journalists ask me whether the
European Union is helping. The reality is that we had destructive fires before
and after joining the EU and swapping the drachma for the euro.
The EU played no role in
helping us fight the flames, a task not in its remit, and it cannot be held
responsible for the fires or for 70 years of Greek society’s abuse of the
natural environment. But it is unquestionable that over the past decade the
Troika of Greece’s official creditors – the European Commission, the European
Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund – has actively deprived the
Greek state of the resources and capabilities it needs in such situations.
Might, therefore, this not be
the moment (the same journalists ask) for Athens to rebel and demand the end of
austerity and of spending cuts that are detrimental to Greece’s survival? Of
course! Every moment is a good moment to confront the Troika over the
straitjacket of inane austerity and misanthropic social policies that have
created a permanent humanitarian crisis in Greece.
Over the course of a decade,
we have lost many more people to the tragedy caused by the EU establishment
than to any flood or forest fire. More than 20,000 people have committed
suicide since 2011, while one in ten working-age Greeks have emigrated because
of the economic depression the EU has imposed on Greece.
I expect crocodile tears to be
shed in Brussels over our fire victims, and similarly hypocritical posturing by
the Greek government. But I do not expect any reversal of the organized
misanthropy afflicting Greece just because nearly 100 died in a single day.
Unless and until progressives across Europe get organized, accept local
responsibility, and band together to apply pressure at the EU level, nothing
will change, except a further strengthening of proudly misanthropic political
forces like Greece’s Golden Dawn, Italy’s Lega, Germany’s Christian Social
Union and Alternative für Deutschland, Sebastian Kurz’s Austrian government,
and the Polish-Hungarian illiberal nexus. In this context, Greece’s forest
fires are a tragic reminder of our collective responsibility as Europeans.
