‘Our village is dead’: The devastating toll of Greece’s wildfires

Villages evacuated, thousands made homeless and livelihoods destroyed in an instant as blazes continue to unsettle the nation.

Evia, Greece – “We owe everything to our neighbours. They saved our houses,” said Dimitra, who lives on Evia, the Greek island that is still being ravaged by wildfires and where locals are fleeing the chaos by sea. “We had no aerial support as they focused on the other fires,” she told Al Jazeera, referring to the recent blazes that burned in Athens and Olympia. In Evia, Greece’s second-largest island and home to the biggest fire front, postcard-perfect scenes in the tourist resort have been replaced by scorched land as fires, which started less than a week ago, spread and engulfed almost the entire north of the island.