‘In my nightmares I'm always in the sea’: a year on from the Greek fires | Hacker News Reader

‘In my nightmares I'm always in the sea’: a year on from the Greek fires

theguardian.com

As a Dutchman I am ashamed how much 'solidarity' there really is in the 'union'.

Sure, they had their books cooked by Goldman Sachs to get in, but everybody knew this. The austerity forced upon the Greeks since the €-crisis is inhumane.

I'm greek and in my opinion this catastrophy doesn't actually have anything to do with the austerity. I'd like to express some personal opinions (please other greek people don't judge or make it polical this is just the opinion I've gathered by watching the news all this time): I believe that the catastrophy it's a result of three things (please forgive my english I hope everything will make sense):

- The Weather. From what I've head the fire had spread in very little time; it was something unprecedented. I don't know if the fires had started by arson but definitely the main responsible party for this destruction was the wind.

- The organization of the civil protection organizations (police, fire department, etc). Unfortunately the civil protection had not properly handled this. They were more or less caught with their pants down; they did not understand how big the fire was and were giving wrong directions to the citizens. Also, there was (and I don't think that there is now) no real plan to handle such situations; every is left to luck. This is more or less how everything in Greece works; sloppy and without a real plan; most people want to do their service, not have any responsibilities and go home. Very few people in key areas have a real plan or want to implement something bigger than day to day work.

- The residential situation in these areas. These areas are more or less a forest near the sea. During the previous years, when I passed with my card I saw some houses in these areas surrounded by forrest. Also there were various other strange things like homes having "private" access to the beach so people running from the fire were trapped and unable to run to the sea(!) Most of these houses did not have a permit to be built there but because of how the Greek government works (I mean in the previous 30+ years) they were able to stay their without any problems. They even had electric power, telephone etc even though they shouldnt since they had built in the forrest. Such things unfortunately exist in other places in Greece but nobody seems to care. This is more or less related to the sloppy nature of greeks and the governments here for like 40+ years.

Please notice that even if everythign worked perfect in the civil protection and even if there were no houses in these forrests, even then I'm not sure that the catastrophy could be averted. We've seen similar situation in much better organized countries than Greece. So there would still be much destruction (and probably dead people) but I think not at this scale.

Update: sorry my last sentence had the opposite meaning of what I wanted to say; it's been corrected now.

My wife is Greek, I’m Northern European and have lived in Greece for more than 10 years (on and off). This sounds similar to what I have observed except in my view it’s even worse. Greece is a massively corrupt country, on all levels, starting from government/politics and culminating all the way down to day-to-day life.

The Greeks have a tendency to blame the politicians for everything that goes wrong but it’s really the corrupt, disintegrating culture - that they are happy to espouse - that’s most to blame. After all, who is voting these corrupt politicians into power year after year? Terms like “the common good”, “strategic thinking”, “planning for the future” , “unity” are not only completely meaningless to the average Greek but actively frowned upon if not ridiculed. Populism holds sway and people are happy to vote for whatever powermonger ends up promising the most in terms of personal gain. Add to that a vast, monstrously centralized civil sector (the bureaucracy and time wasting here is of epic proportions) and one can quickly see why the country is in shambles. Of all the European countries I’ve lived in, I’d say that Italy is the most similar, corruption-wise.

Something funny: Greece is, I think, the only country in the EU where the “Communist Party” (a direct appendage of the Stalinist era with ties to CCCP) has significant power and is voted into parliament every year. The previous prime minister Tsipras was in fact an offshoot of these hardened communists.

Nevertheless, the country itself, outside the big cities, is beautiful beyond belief. It’s just too bad that the culture is so backwards with no sign of things changing for the better.

I am Greek, but have never lived in Greece. My understanding of the situation is exactly this in terms of what happens, but very different in terms of what the causes are.

Basically, Greek society is not a Western bureaucratic society; for lack of a better word, let's call it a relationship society. Some differences as I see them are:

(1) Relationship societies rely on you knowing someone who can help you. Bureaucracies rely on everyone knowing the rules, and civil servants complying with them.

(2) Relationship societies have an understood element of favor trading: someone you know in the office of agriculture helped you, so you help their nephew back with your position at the department of motor vehicles. Bureaucratic societies depend on this not happening in a measurable way, beyond someone being able to quickly tell you which rules you need to apply.

Point (2) in particular is indistinguishable from corruption from a Western bureaucratic standpoint. But it's important to note that it's a stable way to run a society. It may not result in certain things that Western bureaucracies value, but it doesn't mean the society is rotten.

My take on the issue with Greece is that it tried to enter a highly bureaucratic regime, the EU, without a viable plan to modify its culture. And so now we have an impedance mismatch. Everyone still works the old ways, because good luck changing a millenary culture. On the other hand, everyone expects things to change, and gets upset with they don't. Not least of all more bureaucratic EU countries.

I don't know how accurate this model is. But it has the advantage that it doesn't separate Greeks into a weirdly incapable people that cannot coordinate or plan ahead. Prisoners of our own culture, yes, but so is everyone. Unable to operate on the plane set by Western European bureaucracy, undoubtedly (irrespective of whether we want to consider the plane a higher or a lower plane). But ultimately, it's a complicated thing to fix, because both cultures are stable, but going from one to the other requires remarkable activation energy (to further mix metaphors).

Your explanation has some basis. Actually this "relationship society" you mention is common in the middle east (Turkey, Egypt, Syria etc).

The fact that Greece was under Turkish occupation for ~ 400 years (until 1830) probably has something to do with our culture not being close to Western bureocratic .

It didn’t help as the rest of Europe moved to the bureaucratic model, but the relationship model was an essential part of Roman rule (the advances of Roman law notwithstanding, patronage was explicit), so the roots I think are deeper.

What are you talking about? That's even worst excuse than blaming Romans for conquering Greece 2000 years ago. Greece had some great opportunities since the 60s but they never settled down some things up. Half of Greeks were spending fortunes at night clubs and bars. If you said anything about saving money back then they would probably laugh at you. Have you ever met a real Greek?

Well I consider my self a "real" Greek (being Greek and having lived here all my 37 years of life).

I'm not giving excuses to why Greece has come to this state; this is a very long discussion but I don't think that the Greeks are the only one to blame.

Yes some of the things you mention are true but what's the cause of this? I mean why would an average Greek buy a Mercedes to show-off instead of invest these money to his business as western EU people would do? That's what I tried to (I guess very naively explain): This is a culture thing; it seems that the Greeks have a different mentality than the western Europeans, a mentality that is closer to the Middle Easterns.

You told you that? Buying a Mercedes and start flexing around considered a Turkish thing in Germany. North Europeans are mostly saving money essentially for buying a house and then start some other various investments.

First, the Roman thing was simply an illustration that relationship societies are not a Turkish thing; the roots of them are ancient. That far back, I suspect most societies were relationship-based, very much including Greek society before invasion.

Second, let me get this straight. Your point of reference is that the Greek social medium since at least the 60s discouraged saving, and you’re using this as an argument against this being a cultural impedance problem?

Greek here, agree with pretty much everything you said. Just wanted to point out that everyone running for public office is corrupt so that doesn't really give you any choices.

Everyone who can leave the country does so. The people staying behind are those too poor to leave, and those profiting from the crisis (like those dentists that make 100 euro per appointment, have >20 appointments a day, and declare an annual income of 12000 euro a year).

I think you are generalizing a bit too much here! Not everybody that's running for public office is corrupt; there are some people that have good intentions. Of course they aren't able to do much good because the system is corrupt and anybody not going with the flow will be ostracized, but that doesn't change the fact that they did have good intentions.

Also, not everybody leaves the country, and definitely not everybody stays back profites from the crisis! I know a lot of people that stay here and try to do the best they can because they love and like their country. Actually in my case very few of my friends and colleagues have left (i.e from my friends in university it's something like 10% of the people that left and most of them left before the crisis started to do PhDs is US Universities).

After all as others have pointed out it is one of the most beautiful places in the world and after you live some years here you can tolerate many things (like slopy or corrupted officials) to wake up every day with the sun :)

Please point out to me, except for Vasilis Leventis (presumably), a party that isn't corrupt to its bones, dangerous or just plain insane. New democracy and what's left of pasok are so corrupt it's funny. KKE is ridiculous, and now we have a bunch of new fascist parties to boot. Syriza hasn't shown the quite the same levels of corruption as the other major parties, but they're just all over the place and are more like college activists who can't agree with each other than public decision makers.

I know some people who stayed because they "love" their country, almost all of them do so because some uncle/cousin/godfather of theirs is in some industry and they can get work through them.

Of course there are some people who stay (or come back) with the romantic idea of trying to help the situation out, and I commend that, but it's like throwing pebbles at a mountain.

Francis fukuyama puts greece and (mainly southern) italy as places where political development and high social trust did not emerge, hence we have a state in a state of retardation. There is also a lot of pessimism in greece about the stubbornly stagnant attitudes expressed in politics. Add to that the abysmal demographic prospects and it's easy for a certain desperation to develop.

https://books.google.com/books?id=j6hzAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA97&dq=Fr...

I'm from Greece and I'm the only person who slightly agrees with you here. Half of Greeks are crooks and everyone's scamming everyone. I wish one day, I start a new life in a decent European country cause Greece is a shithole. I'm watching Greek news almost half an hour (sometimes more) for many years and have a big social circle were we share everyday stories. Everything is a mess everywhere, not only in the public sector but even the private has some major problems too. Greece has lost the game years now but you must NEVER ever forget one thing: "GREECE IS ONE OF EUROPE'S BEST COSTUMER". Greeks buy European cars, electronics, industrial equipment, military equipment, agricultural tools, everything comes from Europe but one day European fellows decided to blame the Greeks for cooking the books just to get away with the murder. Everyone knew what was going on like they did with the Brexit years and months before it happened. Politics are way more complicated than you think my friend.

As well as upon Spain.. and Italy is languishing. You should read Yanis Varoufakis' book "Adults in the Room".

The Troika (Eurogroup, IMF, ECB) basically bailed out German banks by funneling the money through Greece, the austerity was a side effect of the German finance minister not understanding the difference between micro- and macroeconomics...

And people wonder why everyone is turning to right wing parties (hint: it's desperation of just the same politics making their lives continually miserable)... Merkel's legacy will probably be turning Europe more Nazi than Hitler.

Also, Ursula von der Leyen? Epic facepalm...

Fun fact: Dijsselbloem is now in the running to become head of the IMF if you believe Dutch rumours.

>> And people wonder why everyone is turning to right wing parties (hint: it's desperation of just the same politics making their lives continually miserable)...

Well, if one is not a fascist, one does not vote for fasists. Besides, how is Xrysi Avgi, or Salvini, Orban, etc, making peoples lives any better?

No, the reason for the rise of _fascism_ (and it's fascism, not "populism") is that people have forgotten the atrocities and the devastation of the second world war, that were the inevitable result the last time fascism rose in Europe. And unless the people of Europe remember what that icky grey goo inside their heads is for, we will get there again, hard as it may seem to believe right now.

If anyone is doing some detailed modeling of European cities to determine survival strategies for residents (based on traffic routes, proximity to forests, availability of cellars, etc.) I would be interested to learn more about that. An outcome of that could be a categorization of blocks or buildings to guide residents in their choices during a wildfire.

In case you were no aware of the news last year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Attica_wildfires

A greek tv documentary 10 months later: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNLUNFerCOI

Please notice that this documentary is a little controversial in Greece. It was produced by an anti-government TV station and was aired a little before the EU elections (and 1 month before the government elections which actually resulted in the change of the governing party in greece).

Most of the facts presented should be right but they have a dash of anti-government propaganda so watch it with a critical eye.

I'm from Greece. Here you can build anywhere you like without a permit or any kind of paperwork. Almost 2/3 of Greek cottages are illegal properties. Things went more crazy since the solar panel boom cause electricity was the main reason that people were building the legal way and not like igloos. I know a couple of people from my family and friends that were getting electricity using cables from the neighbors and paying them every month but that's another story. What's the most disturbing of all is that few years ago government decided to legalize those properties just by paying a fee. In other words, they tried to legalize properties in the middle of the jungle that haven't been engineered in any aspect.

I have no experience with wildfires, having lived all my life in an urban environment where concrete and asphalt are everywhere. However, during large fires last year that were in the news, I did some digging on the subject.

Seems that there are a few simple things that one can be done to one’s house and property to reduce the risk of a house going up:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfbEcMeYFFA

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM

* https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/By-topic/Wildfire/Prep...

* https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/By-topic/Wildfire

By eliminating the kindling that's with-in 2m of one's house, and reducing/removing fuel sources that are with-in 10m (ideally 30m), then the home survival rate seems to go up dramatically.

Can anyone in a wildfire area comment on the practically of these recommendations?

One thing that isn't being discussed here is that if your neighbors don't do this, you'll be the only home left on the block. That's a bit depressing, to live deserted next to a bunch of burnt down homes. You can sell the house and move, but being in a burnt down neighborhood will definitely kill the value of your home, so you're losing a lot of money regardless.

A burnt down house probably has a value of $0 (notwithstanding land value), but a standing home--even in ravaged area--probably has a value >$0.

Unless you're banking on insurance buyout, something is better than nothing in most cases. There's also the trauma of all your possessions turning to ash: coming home to a still-standing home may be a bit less stressful than coming home to ruins, even after the strain of an evacuation.

I live in a high risk wildfire area. We practice that advice regularly. Every year we have "chipper day" where we all gather all the dry brush, dead trees, etc. and pile them on the road to be turned in to chips by local hotshot crews, then we can use the chips for our gardens or landscaping or whatever.

I used to live in a brush fire area, and the general consensus among my coworkers was in line with that. Any bushes near the house need to be short, so that embers don't get sucked up into the eaves and set the attic on fire. The more people that do that in a neighborhood the safer everyone is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com