Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the air base at Elefsina on Wednesday, where the country’s firefighting aircraft are based, the prime minister’s office announced on Wednesday.
“I want to say a very big ‘thank you’. I know how difficult it is to do what you do, I would say especially for the CL-215 operators, I am fully aware of what it means to fly airplanes that have seen hard use. And I also know, of course, how much work is done by the support technicians so that you can keep the aircraft in the air,” Mitsotakis said while talking to the pilots of the firefighting aircraft.
“On our part, we have done everything we can to bring the new Canadair 515 as early as possible. We have signed the relevant contract. We took the lead in having a large order from Europe, so that the production line could be moved forward. Because everyone who complains that we don’t have them sooner simply doesn’t know that these planes are not in production and that there has to be a big order to get them underway,” he added.
“However, we know that for the next few years – certainly for the next three years – we will have to make do with what we have. And I want you to know how much all of society appreciates what you are doing in extremely difficult and adverse conditions. I’ve said it many times, we’re always striving to improve. We don’t expect the solution to just come out of thin air. Very important work needs to be done in the area of prevention. I think we have laid some important first foundations in this direction. To realize that this is a total effort in a time of great climate crisis, which I think we are all experiencing. We must constantly become better. And from any failure of ours or from any fire that escapes, we should always look to learn what we can do better,” Mitsotakis noted.
“Of course, what I don’t want under any circumstances is for all the work of the entire state apparatus to be discredited in the context of a political squabble. The pilots themselves, the firefighters themselves, the volunteers themselves have done this work. So, from every fire that escapes we learn our lessons, especially, I would say, for the very difficult zones in which you are practically unable to operate, where the forest intersects with urban areas,” underlined the prime minister.
Mitsotakis was briefed on the Canadair CL-215 and CL-415 missions that participate in the demanding operations to put out fires, while he also visited the Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, where he spoke with the technicians who maintain the aircraft on a 24-hour basis so they can effectively respond to their missions, according to government sources.
Additionally, he spoke with the American pilots of the Erickson helicopters used in aerial firefighting operations, as well as the Italian pilots of the Canadair firefighting aircraft and the French pilots of the SuperPuma helicopter, who have come to Greece through the European Civil Protection Mechanism (rescEU) to help in dealing with forest fires.
Mitsotakis was accompanied by Hellenic National Defence General Staff Chief General Dimitrios Houpis and the Chief of the Hellenic Air Force, Lieutenant General Dimosthenis Grigoriadis.
