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Greece’s deadly wildfires brought out the best in the Cat family
®

STEPPING UP

TO FIGHT

THE FIRES

August brought unprecedented heatwaves across the
whole of Greece, creating some of the worst wildfires
in living memory. Lives were threatened, homes
destroyed, livelihoods ruined, and over 100,000
hectares of ancient pine forests reduced to ashes.

The wildfires that broke out across Greece this “You cannot believe the power of nature and the
summer will leave a lifelong impact on both the land size of the disaster caused by the fire unless you
and the people who lived through it. But during this see it with your own eyes,” recalls Panourgias.
time, we also saw the best of humanity, as people did “Being part of an operation like this fills you with
whatever they could to help their fellow countrymen. a sense of pride while at the same time leaving
you heartbroken by the sheer devastation.”
One such person was Panourgias Papaioannou,
co-founder of Interkat S.A. “As soon as we became Hercules Styliaras, Managing Director of P.Samaras
aware of the seriousness of the situation we knew S.A., who was on his holiday when the fires
we had to do everything we could to help.” struck, experienced something similar. “I didn’t
have to call anyone. By the time I got back to
Because of the experience of the team and operators, Athens, all of our people, drivers, operators and
Interkat’s people and machinery found themselves in the support mechanics were there ready to help.”
frontline of the fire, working to construct access roads
so that fire trucks and other equipment could get to Like Panourgias, Hercules and his men worked
where they were needed most. Once there, they worked alongside the firefighters, knocking down trees
alongside the firefighters using a range of Cat dozers and building firebreaks to stop the spread of fire.
to clear wide paths through the flammable vegetation Initially, they were able to build these breaks around
and so rob the fire of fuel and stop it in its tracks. homes and their lands, but with the fire getting

20 Cat Magazine