Questions raised on Greek forest fire management

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) - Forest fires that have raged in Greece for more than a week and left 63 people dead may have been exacerbated by an administrative decision 10 years ago, forestry experts say.

Greece's forests may have been left more vulnerable when in 1997 rural fire management was shifted from the forestry service to the urban-based Fire Service, with no forestry experience, they say.

"Forest management is highly complex and if one part of that like fire management is missed out it can have these serious ramifications," said Eunice Simmons, head of the National School of Forestry at the University of Cumbria in northern England.

"Controlled burns are all important, especially near habitations," she told Reuters by telephone. "If they haven't been done there will have been a build-up of dead undergrowth allowing fires to spread much farther and faster."

Greece's wildfires over the past eight days have razed vast swathes of forests and farmland; firefighters on Saturday were still battling flames in southern and eastern Greece.

There have been two other major fires in Greece since the administrative shift in 1997: one a year later when 112,802 hectares (278,700 acres) burned and another in 2000 when 167,000 hectares were destroyed.

There has been some speculation that after 2000 there was little left to burn until this summer, when fires have plagued the country.

After the 2000 blaze, Greek forest fire expert Gavril Xanthopoulos wrote a report saying the cause was the weakening of forestry management since the 1997 handover and warned that the danger would get worse unless remedial steps were taken.