AFTER THE INFERNO
Nov 14th, 2007 by admin
The fires that ravaged Greece this summer killed 67 people and destroyed some 642,000 acres of forest and farmland, thousands of houses and barns, and countless people’s hopes and livelihoods. One tenth of Greece’s forest cover is gone; large tracts of countryside are at risk of depopulation. “These wounds will never heal,” Poulis mourns. “there are a few young men in the village, but I’m 70. Am going to plant my olives all over again.
For others, though – such as the two men at breakfast in my hotel who asked the names of the burned villages and wouldn’t say what they were doing there – catastrophe means opportunity. “you wait and see,” says local magistrate.“Lots of people will get rich from this disaster.”
THE GUARDIAN