Wildfires Rage in Greece

[Ntq€310 1]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32521037/ns/world_news-europe/

Seems very bad. The slideshow also really gives you a good view of whats happening. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32521268/ns/news-picture_stories/displaymode/1247/?beginSlide=1&beginChapter=1&beginTab=1 

[your_adress_here 11]

Wow, seems terrible. Has hot weather been causing the fires?

[belfastuniguy 18]

It's a vicious circle.

Previous fires stripped the surrounding countryside of tree cover, the tree cover cooled the air over Athens. Less trees has led to higher temperatures and increased pollution and depleted air quality.

Massive levels of reforestation is required, but that will take years to have any effect.

[Ntq€310 1]

The fires have somewhat been making there own weather. But I suspect Arson, it's just as hot if not hotter in many other areas that are not effected by huge fires, and so many have been reported.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8217433.stm A good BBC page on the situation.

[hamsterTK 93]

Its a meditterreanean climate thing. Hot dry summers create a fire ecology. Many plants and animals who live in these places are adapted to deal with fire and some can't survive without it like some tree species.Its nature

The problem is when humans develop land, leaving strips of empty land filled with overgrown brush, unburnt fuel wouldn't exist in nature, and set the stage for big fires that burn right though neighborhoods

Planners have to work with the concept of an "urban-wildland interface" that puts barriers to fire between developed areas and brushy canyons and hillsides, and the acceptance that stuff has to burn sooner or later as that's how mother nature intended it.