Two helicopters participating in the extinction of a serious fire in the Attica region (Greece) collided this Sunday, and the flames are already 35 kilometers from the urban center of the capital, Athens. The accident has cost the lives of the crew of one of the aircraft, while the two occupants of the other have been injured.
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The two deceased are the Romanian pilot of the helicopter and the Greek co-pilot, according to the Skai broadcaster, which indicates that the passengers of the second aircraft — of the same nationalities — have been taken to a hospital with minor injuries. Several television channels have broadcast images of the impact, when the two aircraft were flying very close and at low altitude until they collided and one of them caught fire and lost the main rotor, crashing to the ground.
The helicopters, identified as Bell 124 models by some media, were participating in firefighting efforts in Psatha, a coastal town about 60 kilometers west of Athens. They had been rented by the Fire Department and had taken off from the Elefsina military airport, but it has not yet been reported whether the Greek crew members were members of the Air Force, who usually pilot firefighting aircraft.
This Wednesday, two firefighters died after being surrounded by flames while fighting a fire on the island of Crete and a third lost his life in another declared in Gytio, in the south of the Peloponnese.
⚠️Χάρτης Πρόβλεψης Κινδύνου 🔥για αύριο Δευτέρα 03/08
🟠Πολύ υψηλός κίνδυνος 4️⃣ σε:
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🚨👉 Επιχειρησιακή ετοιμότητα του Πυροσβεστικού Σώματος:… pic.twitter.com/GA7iz7RWtm
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The fire in the Attica region, in which about 10,000 hectares have already burned and thousands of people have had to be evacuated, was declared four days ago in the Boeotia region, from where it has advanced about 40 kilometers eastward due to strong winds. The fire, which has several fronts and has destroyed a hundred houses, threatened this Sunday the industrial area of the coastal town of Megara, about 35 kilometers west of the center of the Greek capital. Civil Protection has ordered in recent hours the evacuation of half a thousand people from 12 small towns around Megara. The extinction tasks involve 450 firefighters, supported by 126 trucks and 24 aerial means.
Two people have been arrested for their connection to a private electricity transmission network that did not function properly and generated sparks that supposedly started the fire in Boeotia. During the summer of 2024, another fire recorded in that region spread tens of kilometers southeast and reached the urban fabric of Athens.
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Between 2017 and 2025, 47,000 hectares of forest burned in Attica, 38% of the total forest land in the region, according to the Athens National Observatory.
Throughout Saturday, aerial firefighting means could not operate in much of the country due to strong winds, with gusts of up to 130 kilometers per hour. In addition to the large fire in Boeotia and Attica, firefighters are fighting two others this Sunday, in the Phocis region (center) and on the island of Cephalonia, in the Ionian Sea. The fire that had the Rethymno prefecture (Crete) on edge for four days this week has been controlled.
Fires are a recurring phenomenon every summer in Greece. In 2023, the fire burned more than 170,000 hectares (more than 1.2% of Greek territory), 95,000 of them in the Evros fire, the worst recorded in Europe, which claimed more than twenty lives.
The Prime Minister, conservative Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said this Sunday that the Government has invested in recent years “more than ever in strengthening Civil Protection.” “However, there are times when the nature and intensity of weather phenomena exceed any human planning and any operational capacity,” he stressed.
However, criticism of the Government’s management by the opposition and a good part of society for this new catastrophe on the outskirts of Athens is increasing. Poor fire management has brought down governments in Greece, such as in 2009, months before the first financial bailout.
