Wildfire hits Athens suburbs

ATHENS, Greece (Reuters) -- A large forest fire fanned by strong winds swept across the northern Athens suburbs on Thursday, torching dozens of homes, cars and firetrucks with power cuts in parts of the Greek capital, officials said.

The fire started at around 0730 GMT and was racing down the Penteli mountain, 20 km (13 miles) north of Athens, sending a thick dark cloud across the city, blocking out the sun and leaving the smell of charred wood hanging in the air.

"The fire has burnt houses, mainly in the Nea Penteli area," fire brigade spokesman Evangelos Falaras told reporters. "We are mainly battling it on the ground because airplanes and helicopters cannot drop water to the core of the fire because of winds and the thick smoke."

He said more than 40 vehicles, six airplanes and six helicopters as well as hundreds of firefighters, volunteers and residents, were battling the blaze in the affluent area.

A Reuters photographer on the spot said the fire was stretching along several kilometers around the Penteli mountain, from the suburbs of Kifisia to the Vrilisia and Melisia areas further southeast.

"The fire now is in the middle of residential areas," the photographer said. "The winds are still very strong."

The fire has also triggered a series of power cuts in different parts of the capital.

Police said they had evacuated a private clinic in the area as a precaution.

"Some 130 patients and 30 staff members have been taken away from the Lyrakos clinic with police vehicles to other hospitals," a police official told Reuters. "The fire's front is 4 km long and there is no power in the area for the past hour and a half."

Local residents, who complained about what they said was a slow response from firefighters, told Greek television several homes had burnt down with no sign the fire was stopping.

"There is no power, no water and no help. Our houses are doomed," one Penteli resident, in tears, told Greek television.

The suburb's mayor Dimitris Stergiou said the blaze was fast approaching Penteli from several fronts.

"If this continues at the same speed we will see the fire in the central squares of Penteli," Stergiou told reporters.

Greece has seen some of the worst fires of the past decade this summer, caused by record-high temperatures, drought and arsonists.

The Penteli area, once a lush pine forest, was twice torched by arsonists in the mid and late 1990s. E-mail to a friend

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