When it comes to information, we live in an age of abundance. But what use is that, when you’re standing outside your house, hosepipe in hand, staring at a towering inferno coming your way down the mountainside? What is the point of wading through all that noise, day in, day out – a text message telling you to renew your MOT, an uninvited reminder of the summer sales – if at the moment of truth, when life hangs in the balance, you are alone, engulfed by flames.
Nobody really knows the smell and taste of fear until they’ve experienced it. It is difficult to understand, in this ‘golden’ age of information abundance, how the people in the mountain villages of Limassol and Paphos were left alone to face these raging wildfires. How they had limited access to immediate and official guidance. How, for some, the only communication received was the ringing of the church bells… in 2025.
Which direction were the fires going in? What were they supposed to do? Stay and fight to save their homes, livelihoods, memories? Or run to save themselves and their loved ones? Who would they take ‘evacuation’ orders from? Using which road? If their child was camping in the affected area, were they supposed to drive into the heart of the inferno or trust they were in safe hands?
We’ve been here before. We’ve counted dead before too. We also live in a country that is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average. Wildfires, malevolently started or not, will continue to be part of our lives. As will other extreme weather events. Just ask the climate scientists. And then there’s our geography, between two tectonic plates. The earthquake zone.
It's not a joke. The technology exists to have a Public Warning System in place that can alert anyone with a mobile phone of danger in a specific area and give official advice on the best way to stay safe… in multiple languages. Unfortunately, yet again, the tender process for such a system got stuck in appeals.
Apart from those in direct contact with local community leaders, the people facing these horrifying flames did not get official guidance on what to do or where to go until it was self-evident that they had to run. For one couple, the absence of communication proved fatal.
The Civil Defence website had no update. Its social media accounts were quiet. The Fire Service website had no update. Its Facebook account, with a sizeable following, had an ominous post Wednesday morning, warning of the danger of fires due to high temperatures. The next post didn’t come until Friday afternoon… The Fire Service has no ‘X’ account. The Police website had no announcements when the fires broke out, though it did use its Facebook account to post frequent updates to the general public, and its ‘X’ account to retweet posts from the Fire Service spokesperson’s personal account.
The little information made available was in Greek. Regardless of the fact we are in the peak summer months when tourists visit not only the coast, but also the beautiful vineyards in the wine villages of Cyprus. And what about the thousands of foreign residents we welcome to our shores and mountains, to buy properties, set up homes, and make new lives?
According to the Statistical Service website, the 2021 census revealed that one in five residents declare a language other than Greek as the language they speak best – near 200,000 people. If you consider the influx of people fleeing wars since then, the ratio is more likely to be one in four. There may not be a Public Warning System in place in Cyprus, but from all the announcements made by officials in those crucial first 24 hours, where were the statements in other languages? English, Russian, Arabic, Romanian, Bulgarian, Indian, Filipino, Sri Lankan, Ukrainian, Georgian, Nepalese, French, Vietnamese, German, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Persian, Armenian? These are the languages recorded in the last census.
Not even English…
The same 2021 census notes there are around 26,000 residents in the rural areas of Limassol and Paphos districts whose first language is not Greek.
For the sake of us all, and with the next big disaster in mind, it’s time to communicate of value, or perhaps not at all.
The Unbearable Solitude of a Wildfire
