Fire! Fire! Pour on water! From a great height

This is one of the sights you never want to see in Greece - the fire-fighting helicopter thundering down your street.

Until it has made a return journey, and you can judge how far it traveled, you don't know how close the fire might be.

Which didn't worry the kids on our street, who were absolutely overjoyed when it appeared the other day, running down the road shouting and pointing and calling all their friends out to look. The helicopter was re-filling at our local beach, but fortunately the fire was some way away.

Crete has suffered some bad fires this summer, but so far nothing has been as bad in Greece as last summer's terrible devastation.

The helicopters themselves are a fearsome piece of engineering to carry that weight of water - they really are machines that give away how powerful they are with the noise that they make. Last year, whilst we were out and about at Agia Apostoli we got a really good view of one filling up in the sea. You could still really see it struggle to lift the water though.

As impressive as they are, hopefully we won't see them again this summer.

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[maria v]

3 times this week already