Greek firefighters join public outcry at ‘woeful’ response to lethal wildfires

As the death toll reaches 88, the head of the fire service union says the government made thousands of small mistakes that led to the unprecedented number of fatalities

Fury over the Greek government’s handling of forest fires that saw scores of people burn to death barely 15 miles from Athens has escalated.

As the death toll rose to 88, firefighters joined the public outcry with an excoriating indictment of the rescue operation. Authorities had not only been woefully ill prepared to deal with the wind-driven wildfire, but had failed to apologise for the tragedy, said Dimitris Stathopoulos, who heads the 12,500-strong Federation of Firefighters. “The government might be saying there were no grave operational mistakes, but what it isn’t saying is that there were thousands of small mistakes,” he told the Observer. “All those mistakes make the big mistake and that is why we had such an unprecedented number of deaths.”

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from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mMdSzQ