Greek Island Is New Epicenter of Europe’s Summer of Calamity

Evia was ravaged by wildfires this week, adding to the list of places that have fallen victim to extreme weather events made worse by climate change and scorching temperatures.

EVIA, Greece — Amid twisted cages and scorched trees, Harilaos Tertipis stepped out of his ruined stables dragging the charred corpses of his sheep — burned, like so much else, in the wildfires that have raged across Greece. As the survivors of his flock huddled together on a roadside hill below, the bells on their necks clanging and their legs singed, he said that if he had stayed with his animals instead of rushing home to protect his family and house, “I wouldn’t be here now.” As of Wednesday, the fires around the northern parts of Evia, Greece’s second-largest island, had destroyed more than 120,000 acres of pine forest, razed homes and displaced hundreds of people. They have brought assistance from more than 20 countries and been declared “a natural disaster of unprecedented dimensions” by the Greek prime minister.