Yesterday, our phones here in our offices in Heraklion, Crete buzzed warnings to be careful about anything that might light a fire. As wildfires ripped through Attica on the mainland setting alight homes and threatened ancient monuments, here on Crete the scorching sun is creating a tinderbox. If 2020-2021 were a part of ancient Greek history, poets would write of a plague from the gods. Only today, there’s no Moses to lead us out of our captivity, as prisoners of the criminally stupid Pharaohs of today.
Update: It is 11:14 AM in Heraklion and so far eleven fire trucks and other emergency vehicles have passed our offices.
The AC broke in our offices earlier this month, and there are no free technicians to be had at any price. The real temperature outside yesterday was 120F, or about 49C with humidity factored in. The current heatwave is a killer, and the weather alert system warns of this every day as well. The Hellenic National Meteorological Service (HNMS) is one agency in the Greek system, that actually works properly. As for other agencies of the Athens oligarchs? Well, as the delta variant of the coronavirus spreads throughout Greece and the rest of Europe, the WHO and just about every health agency on Earth warns us over and over, how little knowledge or control we have over these events.
Ninety-nine new fires broke out in Greece yesterday, which puts the current number of in-progress blazes at 145. Today Heraklion’s real heat index will reach only about 111F today since the humidity is down to under 30%. On the mainland, more than 300 firefighters are battling blazes in Attica. Almost 200 vehicles, seven airplanes, and a dozen helicopters have been put to use to battle the Armageddon going on in Athens’ suburbs. Thousands have fled already. On Evia Island, the scenes are out of a Mad Max flick. I really, really, really wonder, is this Armageddon 2021?
On Crete, Chania has been put back into curfew mode because COVID surged. In the past 24 hours, 2,800 new cases of the coronavirus were registered by officials at EODY. The case numbers are not going down. COVID is lingering here like a sticky reminder that the globalized world leadership never had our backs at all. The trillions we spent to be safe and protected, were ultimately spent on building a system that, had COVID been deadlier, would have totally failed us all. Now the system is failing an even deadlier threat, global warming.
German rivers overflowed some days ago, and now they are dried up to the point of leaving river cruise ships high and dry. In Russia areas bigger than most nations burn out of control, and the tundra is melting, to release even more CO2 into the already saturated atmosphere that protects our planet. And what is not burning down, is being chopped down in order to graze more methane-producing cattle, or to create access roads into the Amazon, so that we can finish off what’s left of planet Earth. And little Greta Thunberg is the enemy of the criminally stupid of our world.
The Greeks, just sit here simmering, suffering, long and hard, because of a string of bad politicians who proclaim that shit is sweet, the day is night, and that everyone in Greece will soon be rich! Yes, it’s a running joke that everyone here on Crete knows, the joke that is incompetent, lying, cheating, and stealing leaders. Yes, the economy and TUI were almost saved by tourism ministers and corporate bean counters. Unfortunately, a lot more people are going to die on account of such negligence. Mykonos was supposed to be fully vaccinated, remember? No partying, COVID infested Britishers were supposed to get on ferries for the islands, and a brilliant Mitsotakis and Company vaccine information campaign made every 20-something in Heraklion line up for Pfizer or AstraZeneca! Not.
It was so hot day before yesterday my wife and partner Mihaela and I had to go riding in our car just to cool off. On the way home, after a midnight swim in tepid seas, we passed a street party in front of a music venue on a main street. It was 3 am, and we had to stop to let the partying mob swerve out of the road. The scene was something out of Resident Evil for me, playing out to the thump, thump, thump, of modern UTZ beats, gyrating asses and torsos, waving arms, and fog of delta variant drifting like a grim reaper right above. Sorry, reflecting my thoughts as seeing stupid play our like a beasty ballet. And wondering how fucked up Mykonos or Athens probably is.
The latest from the weather service is calming. Now the forecast is for an easing of the heatwave. Here in Crete, the temperature will be 3-5 degrees less than previously. In most places, it will only be 37 degrees or so. Or, about 110F according to the heat index numbers from NOA. A reprieve for people like me who have heart problems. I can walk my Cretan Hound Mojito, if I wait until 2 am, with only a slight chance of my heart failing for good. LOL! And if Thera does not erupt again to send successive 100-foot tsunamis to wipe us out, Crete island may last another year. Or maybe not. As a passing note, during the past 30 days, Crete was shaken by 4 quakes of magnitude 4.0 or above, 89 quakes between 3.0 and 4.0, and 343 quakes between 2.0 and 3.0. There were also 176 quakes below magnitude 2.0 which people don’t normally feel.
Those American tourists who were supposed to help rescue Greek hoteliers? They will probably cancel now since the Center for Disease Control (CDC) is warning U.S. citizens to stay out of Greece now. The good news, if one can call a feeding frenzy for property good, is that the ultra-rich are scooping up Greek assets like nobody’s business. Ever optimistic, the new Neros who play the odds are betting Greece will still be Germany’s Florida, once the fires, plagues, and crooked dealings subside a bit. Maybe this is why we see Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos doing their damndest to get off this rock? Is it possible that there are billionaires capable of deciphering biblical prophesies? Is Greece ground zero for Armageddon 2021?