Eight people have died, dozens hospitalised since the wildfires erupted last week
\n ISTANBUL
\nTurkish coastguards evacuated hundreds of villagers from a burning power plant on Thursday and Greek firefighters battled a major blaze near the ancient Olympic site as a record heatwave wreacked havoc across Europe\u2019s southeast.
\nThe two regional rivals have been united this week in their fight against disasters that officials and experts link to increasingly frequent and intense weather events caused by climate change.
\nEight people have died and dozens have been hospitalised across the southern coasts of Turkey since the wildfires erupted last week.
\nThe blazes in Greece this week briefly cut off the main road leading to Athens and saw worrying fires break out in Olympia — the birthplace of the Olympic Games that is usually crowded with tourists — and on the island of Evia.
\nGreece deployed large forces near Olympia to protect archaeological sites where the first Olympic Games were held in antiquity.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re waging a battle of the titans!\u201d Greek deputy minister for civil protection Nikos Hardalias said.
\nBut perhaps the biggest shock came when winds whipped up a flash fire that subsumed the grounds of an Aegean coast power plant in Turkey storing thousands of tonnes of coal.
\nAn AFP team saw firefighters and police fleeing the 35-year-old Kemerkoy plant in the Aegean province of Mugla as bright balls of orange flames tore through the surrounding hills.
\nHundreds of villagers — many clutching small bags of belongings grabbed from their abandoned houses as the evacuation call sounded — piled onto coastguard speedboats at the nearby port of Oren.
\nThe regional authority said \u201call explosive chemicals\u201d and other hazardous material had been removed from the strategic site.
\n\u201cBut there\u2019s a risk that the fire could spread to the thousands of tonnes of coal inside,\u201d regional mayor Osman Gurun told reporters.
\nA few older villagers in Oren refused to leave the disaster-hit region even while thousands of others were shuttled out by car or boats racing along the Aegean Sea.
\n\u201cWhere do you want us to go at our age?\u201d asked 79-year-old Hulusi Kinic.
\n\u201cWe live here. This is our home. Our last solution was to throw ourselves in the sea (if there was an explosion), but thank God that did not happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eight people have died, dozens hospitalised since the wildfires erupted last week ISTANBUL Turkish coastguards evacuated hundreds of villagers from a burning power plant on Thursday and Greek firefighters battled a major blaze near the ancient Olympic site as a record heatwave wreacked havoc across Europe\u2019s southeast. The two regional rivals have been united this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n