There is nothing you can do to help stupid arrogant people, Stassa is a good example of this arrogance, attacking me and others for our real contributions to Greece, simply because we dont accept their nationalistic crap and are not Greek anyway.

The solution? Let Greece burn, leave the Greeks to their dirt and corruption. The economy survives on money-laundering and tourism, but they will stop soon. Across the Balkans and Middle East, the stable countries will soon overtake Greece for quality of life and civilised behaviour: they have actually achieved it in some areas, already.

The fact is that the Greek state cannot do anything right. Full stop.

Sorry that this is going to be a huge post. I hope you find the time to skim through it. Now, I understand your anger and your sympathy for your friends’ plight, and I am not forgetting that people died in the fires last year. But there are two things to consider here.

First, (once more) wildfires in Greece cannot be predicted and cannot be prevented. We know a few risk factors, like high tempeature and strong winds etc and the fire service is on alert when they apply. The only way for a location to not burn is to make sure it has no trees. If people don’t want their houses to burn, they must either a) build them away from the forests or b) deforest the areas around their communities and keep them deforested. At least then the fires will not threaten their properties.

Second, there is the reaction to the fires: on one hand that of the government and on the other hand that of the citizens.

What the government can do about the fires is a) work to minimise the damage done and b) compensate the victims. In the latter, b) successive Greek governments have failed utterly.

In a) though, they haven’t. I drew a parallel with earthquakes. In 1985 there was a big shake in Attica and since then every new house built is quake-resistant (“αντισεισμικο”), according to international regulations. This is because laws were put in place to ensure you can’t get a building permit if the building doesn’t conform to the regulations. In the next big quake we had, in 1999, the buildings that collapsed were either old or a contractor had broken the law. So mechanisms were put into place to minimise damage from quakes. Nobody blames the government for them.

Similar mechanisms have been put into place to deal with fires: it is illegal to build in forest. However, people break those laws all the time. Yes, not every community striken by fire is illegally built, though some were legalised after they were built. Some were there from Ottoman times. However, for all those communities, the protection of their property is their own responsibility. Government in Greece is decentralised. The role of central government is to aprove funding to suppor the communities’ plans. So it’s not Karamanli’s fault or Papanderou’s fault that Marathonas burned. If there is blame to apportion, that’s for the mayors and their councils to shoulder. And if people are living in houses with wooden roofs over their verandas and surrounded by pine trees, then they can’t even blame the councils. So, yeah, the government is doing something but in this case it’s working at cross-purposes with the people.

As about the citizens reaction, our common cries of outrage are “Τί κάνει η κυβέρνηση;” and “Δεν υπάρχει κράτος!”. Those are loud enough and persistent enough even for our friend Xenos to pick up on and try to use against us. But then 90% of us still go and vote for the same governments we blame. So maybe people are getting compensated for their losses, just indirectly. And maybe they are satisfied with their government but they blame it anyway because they need to have someone to vent their anger and furstration on. And it’s always easier and less traumatic to blame it all on someone else, than accept your portion of the blame and take responsibility for your own shortcomings, even as you criticise those of others.

You know, when I was a kid I actually went into the forest and hugged the damned trees? I was a literal treehugger before I knew what treehuggers were. Then I grew up, in my (completely illegal) house in the woods and then the woods burned down and it took me, oh, some fifteen years to come to terms with the whole thing and even speak about it. And I’m not angry anymore. Anger is just a survival mechanism, it helps you get through the inevitable trauma of loss. But beyond a point it’s sterile and fake and it leads nowhere. You can’t rage and rant forever. Eventually you must get up and go on with life. And you know what? We learn- the knowledge that pine forests will inevitably burn was never discussed ten, even five years ago, we blamed it all on arsonists or Turkish agents, or the anarchists. Nowadays we are beginning to speak the big secret out in the open. In ten years time we’ll figure out what to do about it. There is progress. Thank your anthropomorphic personification of choice for that and do what you can to bring it about.

My understanding is that there are several issues of complete neglect of government policy:
(1) No significant expenditure on planes or fire engines since 2007
(2) No attempt to train conscripted military to help with fire fighting (instead of this childish pretence that they are going to defend Greece against invading armies from Turkey etc)
(3) Heavily delayed mobilisation of resources available, so that the fire had already destroyed massive areas before the services got there
(4) Reliance on the free help of the Red Cross to fight the fire
(5) Delayed requests for help from other countries for aircraft (as in point 3)
(6) I am less sure about this one, but I understood Greek news reports as saying that the original fire in a gulley was left to burn because the authorities thought it would not spread and was too much trouble to deal with. If that’s true, then we can add professional incompetence of the fire authority to the list…

Case in point: the same parts of the mountain that burned this time, had also burned some 15 years ago- I remember because I was there when the whole mountain burned to a crisp, from Dionysos to Pallini and from Nea Pendeli to Marathonas. I think it was in ‘95, there were back-to-back wildfires on Pendeli for a few years and I don’t remember which one was the big one. For years you could see the destruction. Then it turned green again. Hopefully, it will have the chance to do so this time too.

Anyway, I’ve been evacutated or lived in a house that was in the path of wildfires at least five or six times in my life. Wildfires in Greece are a natural disaster and there is nothing to be done to avoid them- just like earthquakes, you can’t predict them and you can’t prevent them. Some of the damage can be minimised but it really depends on the magnitude. This time, the reports talked of gale-force winds that blew constantly. You can’t stop the wind any more that you can stop the fire. Btw, like others, I’ve fought fires, with my hands. There’s nothing you can do.

Except blame the government and so on. But the governments change and the wildfires burn different countries all the time. So there’s a flaw in that logic: “it’s the government’s fault”. It’s nobody’s fault. Sometimes things just die.

Makes you want to say WTF? People here on the Peloponnese still do not have homes and are waiting for assistance. At least now they’ll know the financial assistance from the government isn’t coming.

Unfortunately this will go on until the ktimatologio is made. Ante na telionoume kai me auto.