Thread by @panos_strather

According to this piece:
1) Greek fire brigade vehicles are old (half of them 30 to 40 yo), and get knocked out with the first fires of the season.
2) the funding requested by forest management agency was 2 to 3 times what they were given. And even that came through
1/x

with delay.
3) the union of forest managers used to be 1200 strong, now it's less than 500, last hires of permanent staff were in 2008!
4) fire services are understaffed by about 4,000 fire-fighters!
5) the average age of the fire-fighters is rather old at over 45 yo (wtf!)
2/x

6) out of 14 canadair fire-fighting aircrafts, 8 are of the older generation with operational restrictions in ambient temperature.

We asked for trouble and we got it, now we are paying the price for our criminal negligence.
#GreeceWildfires #GreeceFires
ethnos.gr/ellada/158485_…

And all of this, 3 whole years after the Mati disaster. We chose to hand out millions after millions € to mainstream media in order to support govt narratives instead of fire prevention.

Yes, it's not the right time for criticism but, oh my god, what have we done.

A govt person has presented this table suggesting the number of fire-fighting aircrafts+helicopters has increased compared to past years. I have to say I spent quite some time in Thursday and Friday on flightradar24 and I couldn't count half that number.

https://twitter.com/georgemilon/status/1423707619651428353?s=19

In fact I couldn't even count 20 as far as I remember. Maybe my non-expert eyes couldn't locate them, but this needs to answered in FULL DETAIL. Where was each of these 74 units. There had been almost whole days where only one (1) helicopter was operating in Evia.

Only 1 helicopter dousing the flames of the largest wildfire of the island on record. The people of northern Evia will demand an explanation why they were treated as second class citizens. Why the only plan available seems to have been for the fire to stop at the sea.

Why out of the 74 units that the govt person is explicitly describing as "available" in his graphic, only one was deployed there for such large periods of time. And why so slow in asking for help through the RescEu? Good luck answering these questions to the ppl of northern Evia.

In other cross-confirmed sources the total number of flying fire-fighting units is reported as 69, so that table (few tweets above) is unreliable. 🤷
Anyway, since 2018, there have been a few improvements for which the current govt could and should be given some credit,

These are:
1) the 112 automated messaging platform that communicates evacuation orders with some key info. However, this is just an SMS on phones in an area, and it's mostly useful when the fire advances very fast so someone who has no idea what's happening would get this and

act. In these fires, there was no significant wind and the advance if the fire was well predictable. Also now we have lots of evidence that properties/villages were saved by locals/volunteers that defied the evacuation message.
2) the number of flying fire-fighting units has

increased, regardless of that table which is unreliable. However, this alone doesn't tell us much. The reality on the ground shows that nowhere near that number were actually operational. I hope we see detailed explanation. If we accept that they were all operational, then

the coordination clearly failed. And if we were to accept that they were operational and the coordination was good, then Greece may still need to expand its fleet.
So these two things were certainly in the right direction, but clearly inadequate overall.