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The two-member crew of a firefighting helicopter was killed on Sunday after the aircraft collided mid-air with another helicopter while battling a wildfire near Athens, Greek fire authorities said.
Fire Department spokesperson and Director of Communications, Vassilis Vathrakogiannis, confirmed that both pilots were taken to hospital unconscious, where they were later pronounced dead.
“The pilots were taken unconscious to hospital, where their death was confirmed,” Vathrakogiannis said in a televised address.
Television footage showed one of the helicopters bursting into flames before crashing to the ground following an apparent rotor collision.
The helicopters were among the emergency aircraft deployed to combat a major wildfire threatening the coastal village of Porto Germeno, about 70 kilometres northwest of Athens.
According to the Greek Fire Department, nearly 500 firefighters were battling the blaze, which spread across a mountain overnight and threatened to move towards the western outskirts of Athens.
Around 100 firefighters were also deployed to another wildfire in Aigialia in the northern Peloponnese.
Meanwhile, a separate fire broke out late Saturday on the Ionian island of Cephalonia, a popular tourist destination.
Greek authorities arrested a 44-year-old man on Sunday on suspicion of deliberately starting the Cephalonia wildfire, according to the Greek news agency ANA.
The National Observatory’s climate monitoring service, meteo.gr, estimated that more than 6,500 hectares of land had already been destroyed by separate wildfires around the Gulf of Corinth, including those affecting Porto Germeno.
The agency warned that firefighting efforts continued to face difficult conditions due to persistent strong northerly winds, although wind intensity had eased slightly compared with previous days.
