Three days of fires destroyed more than half of other years’ entire totals

Fires that broke out between August 1-3 burned more than 50% of the land surface usually destroyed in an entire season, the National Observatory of Athens’ centre Beyond said on Wednesday.

Specifically, fires on Rhodes, in Attica, on Evia and in Eastern Mani in August destroyed nearly 6,000 hectares.

Comparatively, in 2020, 10,376 hectares of land was destroyed, while in 2019 the total was 9,405 hectares.

So far this year, the burned land surface totals nearly 12,400 hectares, if one includes the large fires of May through July (Egio, Samos, Stira on Evia, Kefalonia, and Schinos in Corinth).

The Beyond team said it would map in detail the burned land, after analysing the high-resolution images provided by the European Sentinel satellite.

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