“Mr. Kasselakis he has every right to ask to be informed competently and to criticize, this is part of our democracy. But selling stories with dragons, that there were three aerial ones flying over Barnabas while he was in ESKEDIK, is not acceptable. The Fire Department gave him all the aerial data in writing.” pointed out, among others, the Minister of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection, Vassilis Kikilias in an interview he granted to “OPEN”, responding to the criticism of the president of SYRIZA regarding the management of of fire to Barnabas.

In addition, Mr. Kikilias emphasized that “these days we saw experts or non-experts commenting on the fires and giving instructions. It is one thing to have a well-documented critique and analysis by experts, and another thing for everyone to shout at the leadership of the fire department “right Kuropatkin”. “Right Kuropatkin” does not exist to the officers and executives who successfully dealt with 3,500 fires this year.”

More specifically about the management of fires, he stated that “as the prime minister said, we will constantly try to improve and become stronger to protect our fellow citizens. This is the priority I set from the beginning: The protection of our fellow citizens. From the first square meter, the fire, as it started, entered an urban area, in the community of Barnabas. And there we fought house-to-house. And we left, in the course of the fire, 20-30 fire engines there. The same in the other 20 settlements until the fire reaches Penteli.”

He pointed out the difficulties faced by the fire brigade, as the morphology of this area is characterized by canyons, mountains and settlements that are built in the forest.

“Mr. Lekkas also explained that due to the column of smoke that was created on the front of the fire, the aerial vehicles could not operate and were necessarily hitting the fire right and left. while the ground forces were trying to find a way to create fire zones in each settlement. Although the wind was blowing from the north many times the fire went against it. Why? Because a microclimate is also created in the canyons and in the mountains and the fire has its own councils locally at the point where the firefighters were operating” said Mr. Kikilias characteristically.

Regarding the restoration of houses that have been burned or damaged, he said:

“Tomorrow afternoon in Penteli, announcements will be made about the steps that will be taken from now on. I spoke again yesterday with the responsible deputy minister, Mr. Christos Triandopoulos. I want to say that for these houses – which must be demolished and rebuilt or repaired – already if it has not been completed, the engineers are completing the corresponding study for the last ones. And they will be compensated, I repeat, 80% by the Greek state and another 20% with an interest-free loan. All this will be done in the next ten days.”

Regarding the progress in the AEGIS civil protection equipment program, he emphasized:

“We made a great effort to move forward with the AEGIS program. AEGIS did not exist in the country, just as the Ministry of Civil Protection did not exist. It was a vision and an ambition – amid the difficulties we faced with the climate crisis in recent years – of Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who set out to implement it. 1,100 fire brigade vehicles have been contracted. Never in the history of the country have so many vehicles of all types been taken for the fire department.”

Referring to the procurement of the new Canadair aircraft, Mr. Kikilias underlined:

“We get from the Canadian company 7 Canadair. From 2026 we will start receiving them and we will have received all of them in 2030. To them will be added 10 medium-type helicopters, weather stations, radar, artificial intelligence, 100 drones and 32 tractors.”

Regarding the fires that occurred yesterday due to lightning activity, Mr. Kikilias said that too many fires occurred at very high altitudes. Regarding the weather conditions that will prevail in the coming days, the minister pointed out that for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow they will face the following double difficulty:

“On the one hand, to put out lightning fires in difficult areas and at very high altitudes, and on the other hand, if 30 or 40 mm of water really falls, as they say, let’s see if it will be in the form of torrential rain and what we should do about the floods phenomena”, he noted.