Full story
Helicopters collide over Psatha
Two firefighting helicopters collided mid-air while battling a wind-driven wildfire west of Athens on Sunday, and the crash near Psatha in the Boeotia region left two crew members dead and two others surviving, according to ABC News and the Hellenic Fire Service.
“Two firefighting helicopters working to gain control of a major wildfire in Greece collided in midair on Sunday”
ABC News said the crash occurred about 45 miles northwest of Athens, near a hillside village, and that two of the four crew members aboard the two helicopters were killed while two others survived.
The BBC reported that the fatalities were a Danish pilot and a Greek fire service liaison officer, while a British pilot and another Greek co-ordinator on the second helicopter survived.
The BBC also said the collision involved two leased Bell helicopters, and video showed one Bell helicopter hitting the propellers of the other, which burst into flames and crashed in a ravine while the other made an emergency landing.
Mitsotakis grieves, Bell grounded
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis expressed his condolences in a post on X, saying, "The loss of the Greek coordinator and the Danish pilot while they were operating in the major fire at Porto Germeno fills us all with grief."
The BBC added that, according to protocol, all Bell helicopters across the country have been grounded, citing a source from the civil protection ministry.
In the same BBC account, the surviving crew were described as a British pilot and a Greek fire service liaison officer who "escaped with minor injuries" and were admitted to hospital for observation for 24 hours as a precaution.
ABC News said the helicopters had taken off from Elefsina Air Base in the western Attica region, near the wildfire area where they were operating, and that authorities were still determining how the aircraft came into contact.
Wildfire emergency widens
The helicopter crash unfolded as Greece battled multiple wildfires, with ABC News saying around 450 firefighters were deployed on Sunday across the two wildfire zones and evacuations were prompted in the Boeotia and Attica regions.
“Around 450 firefighters were deployed on Sunday across the two wildfire zones.”
The BBC said wildfires have broken out in Greece this week, prompting mass evacuations, and it described a "titanic battle" along a swathe of territory including Porto Germeno, Psatha, Fokida, Megara and Kefalonia where more than 500 firefighters had been struggling to bring the situation under control over the past 72 hours.
In France, ABC News reported that the Gironde Fire ignited on July 22 in Bordeaux, France, had burned an area four times the size of Paris, destroying more than 240 homes and prompting about 300,000 evacuations.
The BBC also noted that other European states have suffered devastating blazes during prolonged heatwaves, and it said some 300,000 people evacuated in Greece have started to return to their homes as fires were contained in other areas.
