“[It’s] “It is the first time there has been a fire here,” said Melina Kritseli, 40, a civil servant who lives in a white two-story house in Patima Halandriou, another Athens suburb that was evacuated.
“I took my children to a friend's house to be safe,” she told AFP as her husband hosed down the ground and grass outside their home.
Television images showed several cars going up in flames and the roofs of stately homes ablaze as helicopters rushed over the city with firefighting water.
“The situation is dramatic,” Natassa Kosmopoulou, mayor of Penteli, told the news portal.
“There is a school and houses on fire, and I see the fire coming towards city hall,” she said.
In the north, near the epicentre of the fire, firefighters and residents assessed the damage: abandoned homes and vehicles had been destroyed by the flames, hillsides were charred black and trees were reduced to branches.
“I spent 30 years building all this,” said 81-year-old Vassilis Stroubelis as he stood in the entrance of his damaged home. “30 years and bam.”