Paphos district wildfire contained
The fire which broke out on Wednesday at a landfill in the Paphos district village of Ayia Marinouda was contained shortly before midnight, fire brigade spokesman Andreas Kettis said on Thursday.
In a post on social media, he confirmed that firefighters remained active in the area throughout the night to put the fire completely out and to ward off any potential flare ups.
Strong winds had fanned the flames and spread the fire beyond the landfill and into the nearby countryside.
In total, Kettis said, nine fire engines, two firefighting vehicles from the forestry department, five earth movers, two water tankers from the Paphos district government, one mobile firefighting unit from the game service, one from the civil defence, and two civil defence firefighting helicopters were required to fight the fire.
Meanwhile, electricity authority (EAC) spokeswoman Christina Papadopoulou said that a total of 10 villages in the Paphos district had been left without electricity “for several hours” on Wednesday due to the fire.
She added that pylons and transformers in the area had been damaged by the flames.
The fire had started in the Ayia Marinouda landfill and spread towards the nearby villages of Ayia Varvara, Nata, and Episkopi.
According to the Cyprus News Agency, some local residents had pointed the finger at other members of the public who “transport various useless objects, furniture, mattresses, and branches and burn them at Ayia Marinouda” as a potential cause of the fire.
Game service senior officer Nikos Kassinis described the fire as a “major environmental disaster”, saying that the fire had broken out “in an area of outstanding natural beauty”.
The causes of the fire are expected to be investigated at a later stage.
Later on Thursday, civil defence deputy spokeswoman Chara Lazarou described the stress of the night in Paphos to the Cyprus News Agency, saying, “there were moments when it seemed that houses were really in danger, people who were in pain, and who said could not leave their homes”.
Nevertheless, she added, the civil defence had to evacuate people from their homes “for safety reasons”.
“That is the moment when you have to convince someone that they should trust you and to follow the instructions of the authorities and the competent bodies. That is a really difficult moment,” she said.
She added that what was “etched” in her mind after having worked through the fire was “the panic and despair, the desperation of some people, who knew that there were farms below where their grandparents lived, who did not know If they had evacuated or if they were still there”.
“That is the most difficult part which you have to manage, to get them to trust you. You tell them to move away for their own safety and at the same time you go in to investigate whether there is someone who needs to be saved or not,” she said.
Once the situation was brought under control in the Paphos district, civil defence teams were then “released” to go and aid relief efforts in the Limassol district.