The first crash test of the fire season came over the weekend [in Voula and Vari and Mount Hymettus].

The evolving climate crisis, high temperatures, and aridity shape a precarious environment for all of us and ring a strong alarm bell even before the first day of summer.

Another summer with burned down forests and danger for citizens’ lives should be inconceivable.

Competent state services must be fully mobilised, in cooperation with municipalities and regional government, and the Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Ministry as a whole must confront the dangers involved as a looming, major threat to all of us.

The entire effort at all these levels must be combined with the vigilance and individual responsibility of citizens, but also with a push, albeit seasonal, to bolster the competent services with manpower and the firefighting equipment that they need.

We have the necessary experience and the state has digital tools, such as the 112 emergency line to report fires and any needs that may arise as a result.

The management of wildfires is a major issue as regards social cohesion at a time that we all seek a return to normalcy.

This major, overarching challenge must not be viewed by opposition parties as an opportunity to spew grandiose rhetoric and exhibit excessive zeal, that often reaches the point of populism and facile condemnations.

It must be seen as a field in which society and the political class will converge and unite, so that with the assistance of the state we may fend off the danger.

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