Kikilias: Contract for weather stations and radar after 24 years

The fire fighting season and the fires that the fire brigades are still facing as well as the development of the AEGIS project dominated the speech of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister, Vassilis Kikilias, at the Green Deal 2024 conference, organized by the Greek Technical Chamber on Monday.

“The fires continue. Altough the fire season has ended, fires broke out in Ios, Naxos, Kalavrita, the Greek-Albanian border and Crete yesterday. These are some of the 9,000 fires that broke out this year, in a fire season that started in March,” Kikilias pointed out and added:

“I think the situation is the most difficult one of the last 30-35 years.”

Regarding the development of the AEGIS project, the minister emphasized that tenders for projects worth 1.8 billion euros have been carried out in the last 11 months and announced that a contract for weather stations and radars will be signed next week.

 “The country has had no meteorological stations and radars since 2004 and the ones it had in 2004 did not work. “Well, after 24 years we will get meteorological stations and radars,” he pointed out and added that AEGIS is a broad project with the involvement of organisations such as TEE. He added that the AEGIS project also includes the supply of sensors, in the forests, drones, satellite images, etc. With reference to this year’s fire protection season, Kikilias pointed out that with the worst fire-meteorological conditions of the last 40 years, 14% fewer stremmas were burnt compared to the average of the last twenty years.