Greece's prime minister said on Thursday it would launch drones and install forest temperature sensors to improve preventive firefighting after criticism from climate activists over a devastating wildfire burning for almost two weeks.
Summer wildfires are common in the Mediterranean nation but the government has said that extremely dry, windy and hot conditions that scientists link toA wildfire in the northeastern region of Evros, Europe's deadliest blaze this summer, continued to burn for the 13th day on Thursday after killing at least 20 people, destroying homes and livelihoods and scorching lush forests.
"Although we were better prepared than any other year, we faced an unprecedented combination of incidents," Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament, citing a severe heatwave in July, Greece's longest in years, then unusually high winds. Environmentalists who advocate stronger international action to curb climate change have accused Greek authorities of spending more funds on extinguishing fires than on prevention.
"Is the climate crisis an alibi for everything? No, it's not," he told lawmakers, adding, however, that global warming had helped intensify wildfires that most of the time had been started by human negligence or arson.
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