Greek Prime Minister toured wildfire-ravaged northern Evia island on Tuesday, nearly five months after multi-front blazes torched one of Greece’s most verdant and pristine forest areas, and promising that his government will restore damages and “transform a natural disaster into a major opportunity for regeneration.”

The center-right ND government and Mitsotakis, personally, attracted widespread criticism for the failure to contain the wildfires in roughly one-third of the island in late July and early August 2021. Evia, which straddles the eastern mainland’s central coast, is the second largest Greek island after Crete.

On Tuesday he chaired a five-hour meeting in the town of Istiaia, attended by a bevy of ministers, local office-holders and a head of a specially established committee for the restoration of northern Evia, former PASOK minister Stavros Benos. Mitsotakis had also been criticized for not having visited the region earlier.

Beyond restoring the burned forestland, Mitsotakis also promised a new 56-kilometer roadway crisscrossing the northern half of Evia, long plagued by a poor transportation system, as well as improvement to its western side harbors.

Headlines