Months behind schedule and plagued by lawsuits, critics say a huge new migrant camp on the Greek island of Lesvos poses a potential wildfire hazard that could wreak havoc on the environment.
Officials say it’s badly needed on an island at the forefront of Europe’s refugee crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers from countries like Syria and Afghanistan arrive since 2015.
The construction site is as far as possible from the island’s capital, Mytilene, and its tourist resorts. Barbed wire keeps intruders out. A private security firm is now guarding the entrance 24 hours a day after protesters set fire to construction machinery in February.
“It’s the worst possible place to build the camp,” Yiorgos Dinos, leader of the firefighters’ union in the region, told AFP.
“If a fire breaks out there, it will burn down half the island.”
According to local community leaders, Greece’s propensity for wildfires and a worrying history of fires at other camps make the new facility – on the edge of a dense pine forest in the middle of nowhere – a potential hazard on a large scale.
“We have so many examples of what can happen to a forest in the event of a fire in adverse weather conditions,” says Christos Tsivgoulis, leader of Komi, one of six communities opposed to the project.
– safety precautions –
The Migration Ministry insists that the new camp be fitted with the “most advanced” fire protection devices available and be built 20 meters (22 yards) from the nearest tree line.
“We are also developing artificial intelligence fire sensors in cooperation with the European Union,” a ministry official told AFP.
High temperatures and strong winds cause forest fires every summer in Greece, especially on islands where the rugged landscape poses an additional obstacle for firefighters.
Scientists say climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of fires in recent years.
Europe’s largest refugee camp, Moria, also on Lesvos, was completely destroyed by fire in 2020.
At that time, Moria was home to more than 10,000 people. Most of them slept outdoors under makeshift shelters.
Last month, a community tent for 150 people burned down in Moria’s temporary replacement for Mavrovouni, which is currently home to around 1,100 people.
On Tuesday, two 18-year-old Afghan asylum seekers were sentenced on appeal to four years in prison for setting the fire in Moria. Four other Afghans were sentenced to ten years in prison last June.
– “Completely unsuitable” –
Michael Bakas, a member of Greece’s Green Party, says that despite the presence of a dedicated firefighting team, “dozens” of fires have broken out around Moria in recent summers.
But Tsivgoulis, the local community representative, argues that the densely forested landscape around the new camp in Plati is more dangerous than Moria.
“Moria was surrounded by an olive grove, olive trees don’t burn that easily, imagine what can happen in a pine forest,” Tsivgoulis said.
“During the summer months, locals are not allowed to enter at night due to the risk of fire. So how does the (migration) ministry ensure there are no accidents when hundreds come and go” to build the camp, he wonders.
“This is a completely unsuitable place to build a whole community,” adds Antonis Komlos, mayor of the Pighi community.
“With a spark, entire villages and crops could be lost,” he said.
There are also fears that the remote site, which can be reached by a rural road 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the nearest village in Bird’s Eye View and 30 kilometers from the island’s capital, Mytilene, will be difficult to evacuate in an emergency.
– ‘Far from our children’ –
With a capacity of 3,000, Plati is said to be the largest of five new camps the European Union has allocated a combined $296 million to Lesvos and four other Greek islands in the Aegean, where migrants arrive from neighboring Turkey.
The new camps are equipped with barbed wire fences, surveillance cameras, X-ray scanners and magnetic gates that close at night.
Mytilene Mayor Stratis Kytelis has described the camp as a “starting point” for the island to “finally leave the migration problem behind – far from Mytilene city, our children and our daily lives”.
But disagreements over location delayed the project for months, with various alternative locations being considered and discarded.
This week Kytelis said Plati was “the only solution to restore calm to the island”.
In a statement to AFP, he insisted authorities take “all (necessary) fire safety measures”.
Originally, the camp should have been completed last September.
An injunction against the project will be discussed later in June.
Completion is expected next year, the Migration Ministry source said.
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