When the Fire Reached the Sea
My first disaster story is from Porto Germeno, in western Attica, Greece, where a major wildfire spread through the area and eventually reached the coast.
The fire was driven by strong winds and burned through large areas of forest and vegetation. Thousands of hectares were affected, and more than a hundred homes were reported damaged or destroyed as assessments continued.
I wasn’t there to photograph the flames themselves. Instead, I arrived afterward, when the fire was gone and the damage was left behind.
What stayed with me was how much the landscape had changed. Trees were completely blackened, animals had been caught in the fire, and homes were left burned and empty. Inside them, everyday things — appliances, furniture, and belongings — were reduced to burned metal, melted plastic, and piles of ash.
Some of the photographs are difficult to look at. A burned refrigerator or washing machine might not sound like much, but seeing ordinary objects destroyed inside someone's home makes the scale of the fire feel very real.
I wanted to photograph that side of the disaster: what remains after the fire.
The trees, the animals, the houses, and all the ordinary things that were there before — now turned into evidence of what happened.
This is my first attempt at disaster photojournalism, and I’m still learning. I’m not trying to make the destruction look beautiful. I’m trying to document it honestly, and tell a small part of the story through what the camera finds.
