Greenwire
Copyright 2007 Environment and Energy Publishing, LLC
ATHENS, Greece — A fire that raged for four days and destroyed 6,200 acres of a park near Athens, Greece, has been brought under control, officials said today.
A prosecutor is investigating whether the fire in the 64,000-acre Mount Parnitha National Park was set to clear land for development after an incendiary device was found on the site.
Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis promised Sunday that the forests will be replanted (AP/San Francisco Chronicle online, July 1).
The fire burned through areas left dry by a weeklong heat wave that saw temperatures of up to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, a national record that has been blamed for 15 heat-stroke related deaths.
In the wake of the fire, President Carolos Papoulias lamented the loss of one of the last green spaces left near the Greek capital and called for the government to commit to a national environmental strategy (Agence France-Presse, July 2). Indonesian fires pollute Malaysia’s air
Smog from burning forests on the Indonesian island of Sumatra is pushing Malaysian air quality to unhealthy levels and harming visibility, a Malaysian meteorological official said today.
Dry weather has exacerbated the fires, which Sumatran farmers set annually to clear land for agriculture. A government ban on the practice is weakly enforced.
The official said that wind moving over hot spots on the island’s Western coast shrouded regions of Malaysia with haze over the weekend.