August 14, 2025
The Volunteers Fighting Greece’s Intensifying Wildfires
By Nic Wong
As climate change brings unprecedented levels of heat and drought, the country’s unpaid fire brigades are bracing for the worst in the absence of state support.
Megan Cameron, Annalisa Jenkins, and Maggie Stewart
Manos Papadakis was 17 when a flight changed his life. It was July of 2018, and he was traveling to the Greek island of Kos with his friends. Looking out his window during takeoff, he was shocked by the horror below. Mati, a village east of Athens, was on fire.
Papadakis recalls watching plumes of smoke fill the sky, resembling a nuclear explosion. The blaze would ultimately kill 104 people, making it the deadliest wildfire in Greece’s history. Since then, wildfires in Greece have only gotten worse.
The summer of 2024 was Greece’s hottest on record, and this year, temperatures are again expected to be higher than normal. As climate change brings unprecedented levels of heat and drought, Greece remains on the front lines of increasingly intense wildfires. Fire seasons are longer, and the fires are harder to extinguish. In 2023, Greece experienced the largest single wildfire to scorch Europe since 1980.
Fires like these are testing the country’s firefighting mechanisms and aging infrastructure. The firefighters managing them are bracing for the worst: They know that this is just the beginning.
