Two Greek firefighting helicopters collide

Two Greek firefighting helicopters collided in mid-air on Sunday as they were battling a wind-driven wildfire west of Athens, sending one aircraft crashing to the ground, footage showed.

The four crew members were recovered, the Greek fire department said. Two were recovered safely while the other two were unconscious. The collision laid bare the danger at the most volatile front of Europe’s wildfire emergency. Strong winds drove flames deeper into the region of the Greek capital and forced fresh evacuations, France guarded a still-burning scar four times the size of Paris, while Spain’s major fires stopped advancing.

The aircraft were Bell helicopters operating over the Psatha area west of Athens, each with a two-person crew. Two of those aboard were Greek and two were foreign nationals, but authorities did not identify their countries. Flames spread rapidly through western Attica, threatening communities and an industrial district outside Megara as violent gusts prevented firefighting aircraft from collecting water from the sea. The advance carried grim resonance in a region where the 2018 Mati wildfire killed 104 people, Europe’s deadliest blaze this century.

Farther west, containment brought no end to the emergency. France’s largest wildfire remained held within its perimeter after forcing 224,000 people to flee in what may have been the country’s largest civilian evacuation outside wartime. Hot spots still burned within a 420-square-kilometre (162-square-mile) scar, thousands remained unable to return home, and nearly 3,000 firefighters were deployed against the Gironde megafire and a second, still-uncontained blaze in Provence.

Together, fires in France and Spain have driven roughly a third of a million people from homes and vacation sites, emptied communities at the height of the European summer and stretched emergency services across simultaneous disasters. The mass evacuations in France and Spain are the latest measure of a wildfire threat growing across Europe. The continent entered 2026 after its worst fire year on record, with more than 10,000 square kilometres (3,860 square miles) burned in 2025. Over the past four decades, wildfires have been linked to nearly 800 deaths across much of Europe, according to the European Environment Agency.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent. It has warmed more than twice the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Human-caused climate change made the extreme fire-weather conditions behind this year’s French blazes at least twice as likely, scientists at World Weather Attribution found in a rapid analysis conducted while the fires were still burning.

Earlier this week, two firefighters died fighting a fire on Crete, while a third was killed in the Peloponnese.

“A pristine forest, a paradise, was surrendered to the hands of the fire,” local farmer Minas Tzortzanis said Saturday. “There are no words to explain what has happened. Destruction. Total destruction.”