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With Greek fires contained, authorities focus on relief

ATHENS, Greece - Winds relented throughout fire-ravaged Greece, enabling thousands of firefighters Wednesday to tame a rash of fires that killed at least 64 people and obliterated huge swaths of fields and forests over six days.

The fire department said all major blazes were receding, but authorities remained on high alert as a heat wave is forecast for week's end.

In the southern Peloponnese peninsula, where 57 deaths were recorded, firefighters, backed by more than 20 water-dropping aircraft, were moving in to extinguish lingering blazes.

"The fires are no longer spreading," fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said. "We had a drop in the wind, which we exploited." Temperatures also dipped to about 82 degrees in the region, compared to nearly 106 degrees when the fires erupted last week.

With most fires under control, the conservative government turned its attention to a vast relief effort - less than three weeks before national elections.

Hundreds of people who lost homes, property, farms and livestock crowded into banks in southern Greece to receive up to $17,732 per family in aid.

Polls indicated growing anger with the government ahead of early elections called by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis for Sept. 16.

The inferno destroyed hundreds of homes in dozens of villages, obliterated fragile mountain ecosystems, displaced thousands of people and threatened an entire rural way of life. The blazes also spread to Ancient Olympia, the 2,800-year-old World Heritage site that is the birthplace of the Olympic Games.

Independent estimates say about 495,000 acres of forest, olive groves and scrub were consumed, the worse fire destruction in Greece since official record keeping began in the 1950s.

[Last modified August 30, 2007, 02:05:40]