Forest fires in Cyprus: ‘We fear the winds will change tonight’

It seems that there is no end to the forest fires in Cyprus, where Four people died. Helicopters and firefighting planes are trying to control the flames. But they can’t be deployed in the dark: “We’re afraid the winds will change tonight,” says Kristen Jansen, who lives on the island.

Fire can spread Spread the past three days From the Troodos Mountains, north of the cities of Limassol and Larnaca. It is an area with a lot of dense vegetation and due to the strong wind the fire spread quickly around it. The forest fire started near the village of Arakapas. “It passed through the village like a hurricane, destroying everything,” said one of the officials of the small community.

The authorities suspect that the four dead are Egyptian workers. The men, aged 22 to 29, were working in a tomato greenhouse and believed to have tried to escape a truck fire via a mountain road. It is believed that the car went off the road and they could not escape on foot.

The island experienced a heat wave this week, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees. Police arrested a 67-year-old man. Around the time the fire broke out, he was said to have set the garbage on fire.

fire snake

“Yesterday the fire was still about 30 kilometers from my house and today it is close to 10 kilometers,” Janssen says. She has been living in Cyprus for more than twelve years. “This has never happened before.” She drove from her home to the area where the fire was burning. “It was an incredibly long fire-snake that traveled through the mountains to where I was standing. Many farmers in the area let their flocks of goats and sheep roam free over the mountains. They probably all got burned.”

Jansen encountered this situation near a forest fire: