AFP UK

Firefighters and desperate locals Sunday battled raging wildfires on the Greek island of Evia that have charred vast areas of pine forest and forced hundreds of people to flee their homes.

“We have ahead of us another difficult evening, another difficult night,” civil protection deputy minister Nikos Hardalias said. 

“On Evia we have two major fire fronts, one in the north and one in the south,” Hardalias said, adding that strong winds were pushing the northern fire front towards beach villages.

Greece and Turkey have been battling devastating fires for nearly two weeks as the region suffered its worst heatwave in decades, which experts have linked to climate change.

So far, the fires have killed two people in Greece and eight in neighbouring Turkey, with dozens more hospitalised.

While rain brought some respite from the blazes in Turkey over the weekend, Greece continues to endure soaring temperatures.

In all, 17 firefighting aircraft — planes and helicopters — were fighting the fires on Evia, Greece’s second largest island, Hardalias said.

Evia lies just northeast of the capital Athens. To the southwest is the Peloponnese region where Hardalias said the situation was stable. Fires in a northern suburb of Athens have subsided, he added.

“The situation in Attica (which encompasses Athens) is better but we are afraid of the danger of flare-ups,” Hardalias said.

Rescuers on Sunday dispatched a helicopter to airlift an injured firefighter from the densely forested Mount Parnitha just north of Athens.

Late Sunday, a Pezetel firefighting aircraft crashed at Zakynthos island in western Greece. The pilot is safe and sound, the ANA news agency reported.

– Firefighters’ nightmare –

The rugged landscape and dense pine forests on Evia that so appeal to tourists are a nightmare for firefighters. The inferno has destroyed homes and reduced thousands of hectares of land to ash.

Authorities have continued to evacuate residents from Evia, with another 349 people taken to safety early Sunday, the Greek coastguard said. 

At the beach of Pefki village, young people struggled across the sand, using chairs to carry mainly elderly and handicapped people on to a ferry.

Some 260 Greek firefighters with 66 vehicles were battling the blazes on Evia, helped by 200 more from Ukraine and Romania with 23 vehicles and air support.

The heat from the fires on Evia and elsewhere was so intense that “the water from the hoses and the water-dropping aircraft was evaporating” before reaching the blazes, one fire service official told the Eleftheros Typos newspaper.

– ‘State is absent’ –

Local officials were critical of the efforts to control the fires, which erupted on the island on Tuesday.

“I have no more voice left to ask for more aircraft. I can’t stand this situation,” Giorgos Tsapourniotis, mayor of the Evia town of Mantoudi, told Skai TV on Saturday.

Many villages were saved only because young people ignored evacuation orders and stayed on to keep the fires away from their homes, he added.

“We are in the hands of God,” said 26-year-old villager Yannis Selimis from Gouves on the north of the island. 

“The state is absent. If people leave, the villages will burn for sure,” he told AFP.

“For the next 40 years we will have no job and in the winter we are going to drown from the floods without the forests that were protecting us,” he added.

Addressing the criticism Sunday, Hardalias said that smoke carried by the wind had hampered visibility for firefighting aircraft.

But Alexis Tsipras, leader of the main opposition Syriza party, slammed the government response.

“Northern Evia is burning for the sixth consecutive day. Local administration & residents are shouting that they are desperately alone, there aren’t adequate forces on land or by air & the only care taken is for evacuations.”

“Is there a management plan? HOW LONG will this drama drag on?” Tsipras wrote in a tweet.

Local authorities were struggling to shelter those forced to flee their homes. Hardalias on Saturday said that provisional shelter had been provided to 2,000 people evacuated from the island.

From July 29 to August 7, 56,655 hectares (140,000 acres) were burnt in Greece, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. The average area burnt over the same 10 summer days between 2008 and 2020 was 1,700 hectares.

Britain, France, Spain and other countries have answered Greece’s appeal for help, and on Sunday, Serbia announced it was sending 13 vehicles with 37 firefighters and three firefighting helicopters.

Police said on Sunday they had arrested 10 people for arson, among them three young men in Pireaus, aged between 16 and 21, for attempting to start a fire in nearby Perama.

The monstrous Dixie Fire in northern California continued to grow overnight, making it the second-largest wildfire in state history as thousands of people continued to flee advancing flames, authorities said Sunday.

As of early Sunday it had destroyed 463,477 acres (187,562 hectares), up from the previous day’s 447,723 acres. It now covers an area larger than Los Angeles and roughly the size of the Hawaiian island of Maui.

The Dixie blaze is the largest active wildfire in the United States, but one of only 11 major wildfires in California.

Over the weekend it surpassed the 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire to make it the second-worst fire in state history, the authorities said. 

The blaze, which on Saturday left three firefighters injured, remained 21 percent contained Sunday, unchanged from the day before, the CalFire website reported.

Crews estimate the fire, which began July 13, will not finally be extinguished before August 20.

Weak winds and higher humidity were providing some succor to firefighters, but they are bracing for higher temperatures expected to exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 centigrade) by midweek.

Thousands of residents have fled the area, many finding temporary housing — even living in tents — in the area, often unsure whether their homes have survived.

On Saturday, the Plumas County sheriff’s office said it had received descriptions of five people considered missing in Greenville and was searching for them.

Five other missing people were confirmed found on Saturday.

The Dixie Fire has already destroyed 404 structures — gutting the historic town of Greenville — and CalFire said workers were being deployed in an effort to save homes in the towns of Crescent Mills and Hunt valley.

More than 5,000 personnel are now battling the Dixie blaze.

By late July, the number of acres burned in California was up more than 250 percent from 2020 — itself the worst year of wildfires in the state’s modern history.

The state’s eight largest wildfires have all come since December 2017.

A long-term drought that scientists say is driven by climate change has left much of the western United States and Canada parched — and vulnerable to explosive and highly destructive fires.

Firefighters and desperate locals Sunday faced another night of battling raging wildfires on the island of Evia that have charred vast areas of pine forest and forced hundreds of people to flee their homes.

“We have ahead of us another difficult evening, another difficult night,” Civil Protection Deputy Minister Nikos Hardalias said. 

“On Evia we have two major fire fronts, one in the north and one in the south,” Hardalias said, adding that strong winds were pushing the northern fire front towards beach villages.

Greece and Turkey have been battling devastating fires for nearly two weeks as the region suffered its worst heatwave in decades, which experts have linked to climate change.

So far, the fires have killed two people in Greece and eight in neighbouring Turkey, with dozens more hospitalised.

While rain brought some respite from the blazes in Turkey over the weekend, Greece continues to endure soaring temperatures.

In all, 17 firefighting aircraft — planes and helicopters — were fighting the fires on Evia, Hardalis said.

Evia lies just northeast of the capital Athens. To the southwest is the Peloponnese region where Hardalias said the situation was stable. Fires in a northern suburb of Athens have subsided, he added.

“The situation in Attica (which encompasses Athens) is better but we are afraid of the danger of flare-ups”, said Hardalias.

Rescuers on Sunday dispatched a helicopter to airlift an injured firefighter from the densely forested Mount Parnitha just north of Athens where he was fighting a flare-up.-

– Firefighters’ nightmare –

The rugged landscape and thick pine forests on Evia that so appeal to tourists have turned in into a nightmare for firefighters. The inferno on Greece’s second largest island has turned thousands of hectares into ashes and destroyed homes.

Authorities have continued to evacuate residents from Evia, with another 349 people taken to safety early Sunday, the Greek Coast Guard. 

At the beach of Pefki, young people struggled across the sand, using chairs to carry mainly elderly and handicapped people on to a ferry.

Some 260 Greek firefighters with 66 vehicles were battling the blazes on Evia, helped by 200 more from Ukraine and Romania with 23 vehicles and the air support.

The heat from the fires on Evia and elsewhere was so intense that “the water from the hoses and the water-dropping aircraft was evaporating” before reaching the blazes, one fire service official told the Eleftheros Typos newspaper.

– ‘State is absent’ –

Local officials were critical of the efforts to control the fires, which erupted on the island on August 3.

“I have no more voice left to ask for more aircraft. I can’t stand this situation”, Giorgos Tsapourniotis, mayor of Mantoudi in Evia told Skai TV on Saturday.

Many villages had only been saved because young people had ignored evacuation orders and stayed on to keep the fires away from their homes, he added.

“We are in the hands of God,” 26-year-old villager Yannis Selimis from Gouves on the north of the island. 

“The State is absent. If people leave, the villages will burn for sure,” he told AFP.

“For the next 40 years we will have no job and in the winter we are going to drown from the floods without the forests that were protecting us,” he added.

Addressing the criticism Sunday, Hardalias that smoke carried by the wind had hampered visibility for firefighting aircraft.

But Alexis Tsipras, leader of the main opposition Syriza party, slammed the government response.

“Northern Evia is burning for the sixth consecutive day. Local administration & residents are shouting that they are desparately alone, there aren’t adequate forces on land or by air & the only care taken is for evacuations.”

“Is there a management plan? HOW LONG will this drama drag on?” Tsipras wrote in a tweet.

Local authorities were struggling to shelter those forced to flee their homes. Hardalias on Saturday said that provisional shelter had been provided to 2,000 people evacuated from the island.

In the previous 10 days alone, 56,655 hectares (140,000 acres) have been burnt in Greece, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. The average number of hectares burnt over the same period between 2008 and 2020 was 1,700 hectares.

Britain, France, Spain and other countries have answered Greece’s appeal for help, and on Sunday, Serbia announced it was sending 13 vehicles with 37 firefighters and three firefighting helicopters.

Police said on Sunday they had arrested 10 people for arson, among them three young men in Pireaus, aged between 16 and 21, for attempting to start a fire in nearby Perama.

Hundreds of Greek firefighters fought desperately Sunday to control wildfires on the island of Evia that have charred vast areas of pine forest, destroyed homes and forced tourists and locals to flee.

“We have ahead of us another difficult evening, another difficult night,” Civil Protection Deputy Minister Nikos Hardalias said Sunday. 

“On Evia we have two major fire fronts, one in the north and one in the south. The one in the north is driven by blasts of wind to the beach settlements”, he added.

In all, 17 firefighting aircraft — planes and helicopters — were fighting the fires on Evia, he added.

Evia lies just northeast of the capital Athens. To the southwest is the Peloponnese region where Hardalias said the situation was stable. Fires in a northern suburb of Athens have subsided, he added.

“The situation in Attica (which encompasses Athens) is better but we are afraid of the danger of flare-ups”, said Hardalias.

Rescuers on Sunday dispatched a helicopter to airlift an injured firefighter from the densely forested Mount Parnitha just north of Athens where he was fighting a flare-up.

– No respite for Greece –

Greece and Turkey have been battling devastating fires for nearly two weeks as the region suffered its worst heatwave in decades, which experts have linked to climate change.

So far, the fires have killed two people in Greece and eight in neighbouring Turkey, with dozens more hospitalised.

While rain brought some respite from the blazes in Turkey over the weekend, Greece continues to endure soaring temperatures.

The rugged landscape and thick pine forests on Evia that so appeal to tourists have turned in into a nightmare for firefighters. The inferno on Greece’s second largest island has turned thousands of hectares into ashes and destroyed homes.

Authorities have continued to evacuate residents from Evia, with another 349 people taken to safety early Sunday, the Greek Coast Guard. 

At the beach of Pefki, young people struggled across the sand, using chairs to carry mainly elderly and handicapped people on to a ferry.

Some 260 Greek firefighters with 66 vehicles were battling the blazes on Evia, helped by 200 more from Ukraine and Romania with 23 vehicles and the air support.

The heat from the fires on Evia and elsewhere was so intense that “the water from the hoses and the water-dropping aircraft was evaporating” before reaching the blazes, one fire service official told the Eleftheros Typos newspaper.

– ‘State is absent’ –

Local officials were critical of the efforts to control the fires, which erupted on the island on August 3.

“I have no more voice left to ask for more aircraft. I can’t stand this situation”, Giorgos Tsapourniotis, mayor of Mantoudi in Evia told Skai TV on Saturday.

Many villages had only been saved because young people had ignored evacuation orders and stayed on to keep the fires away from their homes, he added.

“We are in the hands of God,” 26-year-old villager Yannis Selimis from Gouves on the north of the island. 

“The State is absent. If people leave, the villages will burn for sure,” he told AFP.

“For the next 40 years we will have no job and in the winter we are going to drown from the floods without the forests that were protecting us,” he added.

Addressing the criticism Sunday, Hardalias said that smoke and the wind direction and the resulting poor visibility had hampered the work of the water-dropping aircraft.

But Nasos Iliopoulos, spokesman for the main opposition Syriza party, said many fires had burned out of control for days across Greece without high winds. Someone, he said, would have to take responsibility for the “truly tragic” devastation.

Already late Saturday, Hardalias said that provisional shelter had been provided to 2,000 people evacuated from the island.

– More arson suspects arrested –

In the previous 10 days alone, 56,655 hectares (140,000 acres) have been burnt in Greece, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. The average number of hectares burnt over the same period between 2008 and 2020 was 1,700 hectares.

Britain, France, Spain and other countries have answered Greece’s appeal for help, and on Sunday, Serbia announced it was sending 13 vehicles with 37 firefighters and three firefighting helicopters.

The Greek authorities meanwhile are on high alert to prevent more arsons. 

Firefighters arrested three young men, aged between 16 and 21, Sunday morning at port city of Piraeus, near Athens, for attempted arson in nearby Perama.

In the Peloponnese, a 71-year-old man was arrested Sunday in Pylos. 

And Athens police said Sunday they had arrested a foreigner at a park in Athens trying to light napkins at the root of a tree.

Hundreds of Greek firefighters fought desperately Sunday to control wildfires on the island of Evia that have charred vast areas of pine forest, destroyed homes and forced tourists and locals to flee.

Blazes also raged in the Peloponnese region in the southwest, but fires in a northern suburb of Athens have subsided.

Greece and Turkey have been battling devastating fires for nearly two weeks as the region suffers its worst heatwave in decades. Officials and experts have linked such intense weather events to climate change.

So far, they have killed two people in Greece and eight in neighbouring Turkey, with dozens more hospitalised.

But while rains brought some respite from the blazes in Turkey over the weekend, Greece continued to suffer amid soaring temperatures.

The rugged landscape and thick pine forests on Evia which made it appealing to tourists have turned in into a nightmare for firefighters.

The inferno on Greece’s second largest island, which lies east of the capital, has turned thousands of hectares into ashes and destroyed homes.

Thousands have been evacuated, and hundreds of locals and tourists have fled on ferry boats. 

Authorities have continued to evacuate residents from Evia. The Greek Coast Guard said 349 people were taken off the island early Sunday.

On Saturday, nine people were evacuated from a beach surrounded by flames by the coastal village of Psaropouli, the ANA news agency reported. 

Some 260 Greek firefighters with 66 vehicles were battling the blazes on Evia, helped by 200 more from Ukraine and Romania with 23 vehicles and seven aircraft.

One fire service official told the Eleftheros Typos newspaper that the heat from the fires on Evia and elsewhere was so intense that “the water from the hoses and the water-dropping aircraft was evaporating” before reaching the blazes.

Flames were devouring houses in the villages of Ellinika, Vasilika and Psaropouli.

– ‘State is absent’ –

Local officials were critical of the efforts to control the fires, which erupted on the island on August 3.

“With what we have seen so far the fire won’t be under control any time soon. I have no more voice left to ask for more aircraft. I can’t stand this situation”, Giorgos Tsapourniotis, mayor of Mantoudi in Evia told Skai TV on Saturday.

He added that many villages were saved because young people stayed there despite the evacuation order and kept the fires away from their homes.

“We are in the hands of God. The State is absent. If people leave, the villages will burn for sure,” said Yannis Selimis, 26, from the village of Gouves in northern Evia where locals were ordered to evacuate.

“For the next 40 years we will have no job and in the winter we are going to drown from the floods without the forests that were protecting us,” said Selimis.

Greek deputy minister for civil protection Nikos Hardalias said late Saturday that provisional shelter was provided to 2,000 people who have been evacuated.

Meanwhile, in the Peloponnese region in the southwest, fire fronts in the towns of East Mani, Ilia and in Messinia remained active with many villages and settlements evacuated.

Rescuers on Sunday dispatched a helicopter to airlift an injured firefighter from the densely-forested Mount Parnitha just north of Athens where he was fighting a flare-up.

Blazes have raged for several days in the northern suburbs of Athens, though there was no longer any active front by Sunday.

In the previous 10 days, 56,655 hectares (140,000 acres) have been burnt in Greece, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. The average number of hectares burnt over the same period between 2008 and 2020 was 1,700 hectares.

Because of this situation deemed the worst in decades, Greece requested help through the European emergency support system, and reinforcement were sent from several countries.

Hundreds of Greek firefighters fought desperately Sunday to control wildfires on the island of Evia that have charred vast areas of pine forest, destroyed homes and forced tourists and locals to flee.

Blazes also raged in the Peloponnese region in the southwest, but fires in a northern suburb of Athens have subsided.

Greece and Turkey have been battling devastating fires for nearly two weeks as the region suffers its worst heatwave in decades. Officials and experts have linked such intense weather events to climate change.

So far, they have killed two people in Greece and eight in neighbouring Turkey, with dozens more hospitalised.

But while rains brought some respite from the blazes in Turkey over the weekend, Greece continued to suffer amid soaring temperatures.

The rugged landscape and thick pine forests on Evia which made it appealing to tourists have turned in into a nightmare for firefighters.

The inferno on the Greece’s second largest island, which lies east of the capital, has turned thousands of hectares into ashes and destroyed homes.

Thousands have been evacuated, and hundreds of locals and tourists have fled on ferry boats. 

Some 260 Greek firefighters with 66 vehicles were battling the blazes on Evia, helped by 200 more from Ukraine and Romania with 23 vehicles and seven aircraft.

One fire service official told the Eleftheros Typos newspaper that the heat from the fires on Evia and elsewhere was so intense that “the water from the hoses and the water-dropping aircraft was evaporating” before reaching the blazes.

Flames were devouring houses in the villages of Ellinika, Vasilika and Psaropouli.

Nine people were evacuated from a beach surrounded by flames by the coastal village of Psaropouli, the ANA news agency reported on Saturday. 

Ferry boats and navy war ships were on alert off the coast to evacuate people. 

– ‘Living dead’ –

Local officials were critical of the efforts to control the fires, which erupted on the island on August 3.

“With what we have seen so far the fire won’t be under control any time soon. I have no more voice left to ask for more aircraft. I can’t stand this situation”, Giorgos Tsapourniotis, mayor of Mantoudi in Evia told Skai TV on Saturday.

He added that many villages were saved because young people stayed there despite the evacuation order and kept the fires away from their homes.

“40,000 people will be living dead in the next years because of the destruction in the area”, Iraklis, a man from Istiaia town in northern Evia told Open TV on Sunday, as people’s homes and livelihoods were wiped out.

Greek deputy minister for civil protection Nikos Hardalias said late Saturday that provisional shelter was provided to 2,000 people who have been evacuated.

Meanwhile, in the Peloponnese region in the southwest, fire fronts in the towns of East Mani, Ilia and in Messinia remained active with many villages and settlements evacuated.

In a northern suburb of Athens, where blazes have raged for several days, there was no longer any active front though firefighters were tackling flare-ups.

In the previous 10 days, 56,655 hectares (140,000 acres) have been burnt in Greece, according to the European Forest Fire Information System. The average number of hectares burnt over the same period between 2008 and 2020 was 1,700 hectares.

Because of this situation deemed the worst in decades, Greece requested help through the European emergency support system, and reinforcement were sent from several countries.

US authorities said Saturday they were searching for five people missing as a huge wildfire raged in northern California, leaving two towns in little more than cinders.

The Dixie Fire, the largest active wildfire in the United States, recently became the third-largest in California history.

As of late Saturday it had destroyed 447,723 acres (180,782 hectares) in four counties, up from the previous day’s 434,813 and surpassing the vast Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon.

Dixie is now 21 percent contained, the CalFire website reported, adding that three firefighters had so far been injured fighting the blaze.

While the fire continued to grow, officials said Saturday that cooler, calmer weather was giving firefighters a much-needed break.

Those conditions are expected to continue into Sunday.

“We expect the same fire behavior as yesterday, which was fairly moderate,” Jake Cagle, a firefighter sections chief, said in a briefing Saturday.

Earlier, the Dixie Fire left the Gold Rush town of Greenville charred and in ruins, while also burning through the small town of Canyondam.

The Plumas County sheriff’s office said it had received descriptions of five people considered missing in Greenville and was searching for them.

Five other missing people were confirmed found on Saturday.

– Residents refuse to leave –

As authorities urge thousands of locals to evacuate, they have been met at times by armed residents refusing to budge, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Law enforcement officers are asking any residents who stay for the names of next-of-kin — to be notified if the fire claims their lives.

The Dixie Fire’s movement northeastward has been slowed in part because it has reached the “scar” of an earlier blaze, the 2007 Moonlight Fire, reducing available fuel, CalFire said.

More than 5,000 personnel are now battling the Dixie blaze, which is sending enormous clouds of smoke into the air that are easily visible from space.

A preliminary investigation has suggested the fire was started when a tree fell on a power cable owned by regional utility Pacific Gas & Company (PG&E), a private operator that was earlier blamed for the huge Camp Fire in 2018, which killed 86 people.

By late July, the number of acres burned in California was up more than 250 percent from 2020 — itself the worst year of wildfires in the state’s modern history.

A long-term drought that scientists say is driven by climate change has left much of the western United States parched — and vulnerable to explosive and highly destructive fires.

US authorities said Saturday they were searching for five people missing as a huge wildfire raged in northern California, leaving two towns in little more than cinders.

The Dixie Fire, the largest active wildfire in the United States, recently became the third-largest in California history.

As of Saturday it had blackened 446,723 acres (180,782 hectares) in four counties, up from the previous day’s 434,813 and surpassing the vast Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon. Dixie is now 21 percent contained, the CalFire website reported.

While the fire continued to grow, officials said Saturday that cooler, calmer weather was giving firefighters a much-needed break.

Those conditions are expected to continue into Sunday.

“We expect the same fire behavior as yesterday, which was fairly moderate,” Jake Cagle, a firefighter sections chief, said in a briefing Saturday.

Earlier, the Dixie Fire left the Gold Rush town of Greenville charred and in ruins, while also burning through the small town of Canyondam.

The Plumas County sheriff’s office said it had received descriptions of five people considered missing in Greenville and was searching for them.

Five other missing people were confirmed found on Saturday.

– Residents refuse to leave –

As authorities urge thousands of locals to evacuate, they have been met at times by armed residents refusing to budge, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Law enforcement officers are asking any residents who stay for the names of next-of-kin — to be notified if the fire claims their lives.

The Dixie Fire’s movement northeastward has been slowed in part because it has reached the “scar” of an earlier blaze, the 2007 Moonlight Fire, reducing available fuel, CalFire said.

More than 5,000 personnel are now battling the Dixie blaze, which is sending enormous clouds of smoke into the air that are easily visible from space.

A preliminary investigation has suggested the fire was started when a tree fell on a power cable owned by regional utility Pacific Gas & Company (PG&E), a private operator that was earlier blamed for the huge Camp Fire in 2018, which killed 86 people.

By late July, the number of acres burned in California was up more than 250 percent from 2020 — itself the worst year of wildfires in the state’s modern history.

A long-term drought that scientists say is driven by climate change has left much of the western United States parched — and vulnerable to explosive and highly destructive fires.

“You’ve got too many farmers pumping all around,” complained Raul Atilano. This octogenarian resident of Corcoran, the self-proclaimed farming capital of California, was struggling to make sense of the strangest of phenomena: his already suffering town is sinking, ever so gradually, into the ground.

A constant stream of trucks carrying tomatoes, alfalfa or cotton outside this town of 20,000 shows just how inextricably Corcoran’s fate is tied to the intensive farming practiced here.

To irrigate its vast fields and help feed America, farm operators began in the last century to pump water from underground sources, so much so that the ground has begun to sink — imagine a series of giant straws sucking up groundwater faster than rain can replenish it, as hydrologist Anne Senter explained it to AFP.

– Like a 2-story house –

Strangely, signs of this subsidence are nearly invisible to the human eye. There are no cracks in the walls of the typical American shops in the town’s center, nor crevices opening up in the streets or fields: to measure subsidence, Californian authorities had to turn to NASA, which used satellites to analyze the geological change.

And yet, over the past 100 years, Corcoran has sunken “the equivalent of a two-story house,” Jeanine Jones, a manager with the California Department of Water Resources, told AFP.

The phenomenon “can be a threat to infrastructure, groundwater wells, levees, aqueducts,” she said. 

The one recognizable sign of this dangerous change is a levee on the edge of the city, in an area where wisps of cotton blow in the air. In 2017, the authorities launched a major project to raise the levee, for fear that the city, which sits in a basin, could be flooded … whenever the rains finally return.  

This year, however, the problem has been not floods but an alarming drought aggravated by climate change.

It has transformed this food-basket of America into a vast field of brown dust, forcing the authorities to impose water-use restrictions on farmers.

So Corcoran now finds itself in the midst of a vicious circle: with their water supplies limited, farm operators are forced to pump more underground water, which in turn speeds the sinking of the town.

– Fear of losing jobs – 

Few locals have spoken out against the problem — not surprising, since most of them work for the same big agribusinesses pumping up groundwater. 

“They are afraid that if they speak against them, they might lose their job,” said Atilano. He spent years working for one of the country’s biggest cotton producers, J.G. Boswell, whose name is seen on thousands of cloth bags stuffed with cotton that are seen stacked around town.  

“I don’t care,” he adds with a smile. “I’ve been retired for 22 years.”

As big farm operations have increasingly become mechanized and industrialized, requiring less and less local labor, the town’s inhabitants themselves have been sinking — into a debilitating economic and psychological slump.

One-third of the majority Hispanic population here now lives in poverty. The three movie theaters that once brought life to the town have all closed their doors.

“A lot of people are moving out,” said local resident Raul Gomez, who is 77.

On this summer afternoon, under a crushing heat wave, some people have stopped to chat under an enormous wall painting.

It depicts a clear blue lake surrounded by snow-capped mountain peaks — for now, a distant dream.

Once famed for its exceptional wildlife, Libya’s Farwa island risks becoming just another victim of lawlessness in the war-ravaged North African nation, activists struggling to save it warn.

An uninhabited 13-kilometre-long (eight mile) sandbar cut off at high tide in far western Libya, Farwa appears picture-postcard idyllic, with scattered date palms on white sandy beaches and ringed by the sparkling Mediterranean Sea.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has said Farwa is potentially the “most important coastal and marine site in western Libya, in terms of its high marine and coastal biodiversity”.

But it faces a long list of threats, said Fawzi Dhane from local environmental group Bado, identifying illegal fishing and pollution as key worries.

Climate change is also exacerbating the situation, making Farwa more vulnerable to the pressures already heaped on its fragile environment.

For decades there were few visitors, apart from occasional school trips to the island.

Libya’s former dictator Moamer Kadhafi dreamt of building a luxury seaside resort there, complete with “floating” villas and a golf course.

But Kadhafi was ousted and killed in a 2011 NATO-backed uprising, and Libya has struggled to contain violence and political turmoil ever since.

– Explosive fishing –

In a country awash with weapons, some find lobbing grenades into the water an easy way to fish — a destructive method killing everything in the blast zone.

“The fishermen do not respect anything,” Dhane said, blaming boats from the port of Zuwara, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the east.

“They fish at all times, in an unregulated way — and they practise fishing with explosives.”

Endangered loggerhead turtles are also being harmed, according to the activist.

“The turtles are sometimes caught in fishing nets, when they are not killed by fishermen who fear their bites,” said Dhane.

The Bado association works to protect turtle clutches laid on the beach from predators and from people who come to dig up the eggs.

The island, which lies close to the border with Tunisia, is made up of sand dunes stretching over 4.7 square kilometres (1.81 square miles). Its lagoon and salt marshes are also home to flamingos.

One of the only buildings is a crumbling lighthouse built in the 1920s under Italian colonial rule.

Farwa is among the most important areas in Libya for many migratory birds, according to Tarek Jdeidi from the University of Tripoli. It is a key staging post for those travelling over Africa to rest before flying across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Today, Farwa has become a popular spot for Libyan holidaymakers, with dozens visiting every weekend.

“They leave their rubbish behind,” sighed Dhane.

– Chemical pollution –

Another threat comes from the nearby Abu Kammash petrochemical factory, which has for years “leaked heavy metals” into the soil and sea, according to Dhane.

While the complex has been abandoned, the impact of the dangerous pollution “is still felt”, he added.

Shawky Muammar, an archaeologist who has conducted digs on the island, discovering Roman-era tools and tombs, calls the pollution from the dilapidated plant an “environmental disaster”.

He also expressed worry that rising sea levels due to climate change could swamp the low-lying island.

“It risks being swallowed up if measures are not taken to try to contain the sea,” he said.

In recent years, oil-rich Libya was split between two rival administrations backed by foreign powers and myriad militias.

After a peace deal last year, an interim unity government was agreed in March ahead of elections set for December.

But it has not changed anything for the island.

In the meantime, environmental groups have taken on the task of protecting Farwa, while hoping for a return to stability and the rule of law.

Dhane said he has “organised conferences and awareness campaigns in schools” to try and explain the threats the island faces.

And in partnership with international organisations like the World Wildlife Fund, “we are trying to educate fishermen”, he added.