The Deputy Minister of Civil Protection and Crisis Management, Nikos Hardalias, responded to the complaints of the residents of Evia for lack of air means during the catastrophic fire.

As he hastened to clarify, the country has 73 aerial means, however he tried to clarify some things concerning the flights they make.

According to him, 67 are firefighting aircraft and helicopters, the rest belong to coordination centers, while others specialize in personnel transport.

Of the 67, as he said, 6-7 aircraft perform maintenance at regular intervals.

Of the remaining 60, 20 remain at regional bases. “It must be understood that they remain there so that they can at any time safeguard a new front in these areas,” said Mr. Hardalias.

According to him, these 40 aircraft that remain active “do not fly all together. Almost half fly , while the rest are being refueled so that they can fly later “.

In this context, he presented an image of the fiery front in Evia, where “a huge veil of smoke can be seen that does not allow the aerial attack of the fires”. As he said, “when a passage is found, helicopters pass through and operate.”

In fact, he spoke of a very difficult situation from the first moment. “In relation to the sequence of fires, I remind you that we had 586 fires from August 1st to August 8th. “Every day we had to deal with a three-digit number of fires.”

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