It’s Like Something Out Of Euripides

The picture above is the smoke from Greece's forest fires seen from space.  As the stories continue to filter out of Greece about horror scenes of charred corpses and devestated villages it is sad to think that more is to come.  Death toll rises from Greek fires

A helicopter swooped into a village in southern Greece to rescue residents trapped by flames on Monday — one of dozens of fires that have torn through village and forest across the country, leaving blackened landscape in their wake.

The fires have killed 63 people over four days, destroying everything in their path. One broke out on the fringe of Athens Monday, but was quickly brought under control. Another scorched the woodland around the birthplace of the Olympics.

A woman found dead on Friday with her arms around the bodies of four children had fled her home — the only house left standing in the village, said a neighbor in the Peloponnese town of Artemida. The home's white walls and red tile roof were unscathed.

"Nothing would have happened to them. The few that stayed didn't get injured, but most people left to escape, everyone, and only two or three stayed behind," said the neighbor, who identified herself as Miss Paraskevopoulou.

…

Dimitris Papangelopoulos, who is responsible for prosecuting terrorism and organized crime, ordered an investigation to determine "whether the crimes of arsonists and of arson attacks on forests" could come under Greece's anti-terrorism law, the Public Order Ministry said.

Forest fires are common during Greece's hot, dry summers — but nothing has approached the scale of the past three days.

"So many fires breaking out simultaneously in so many parts of the country cannot be a coincidence," Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said in a nationally televised address on Saturday.

When you look at the picture from space it is hard not to think that he might be right.