Forest fire related deaths in Greece: confirming what we already know 1

Forest fires are dangerous phenomena that can cause loss of life of firefighters and other citizens. Their death toll is relatively small, comparing for example to the number of lives lost in traffic accidents. However, fire related deaths are always dramatic and create strong emotions to the public. More important, they are a concern to all those working in fire management because, as a rule, most of these deaths can be avoided if the necessary knowledge exists and the necessary care is exercised. This paper presents a number of forest fire related deaths of both firefighters and citizens that occurred in Greece in the last decades. The incidents are described briefly, providing the necessary information that leads to the basic conclusion of this work: the causes of each fatal accident are not unique to that case. They have been identified before in some other place and time, and they fall into broad categories for which warnings have been established in international literature. The question that has to be answered then is if the victims posessed, at the time of the accident, the necessary knowledge on how to avoid putting their life in danger. A negative answer to this question necessarily points to the ever-existing need to educate firefighters and the public, especially when the latter lives in wildland-urban interface areas, on what they should do, what they shouldn’t, and which are the situations that shout “watch-out