A survivor's account

I am an American artist who teaches painting on the island of Skyros in August.

July 23, I was visiting my friend in Rafina, at her beautiful house on a steep cliff above the water in Kokkino Limanaki, a semicircular canyon created by cliffs lined with pines and houses looking down.

We had prepared a dinner for guests arriving that night from America. I was to stay there while she drove to the airport to pick them up.

That afternoon we stood on her roof watching a cloud of smoke from a distant fire grow closer, and the firefighters' water-dropping helicopters and planes began to fly right over her house, to refill from the sea at Kokkino Limanaki. She called a neighbor who lived in the direction of the smoke, to offer her refuge.

The neighbor, Afrodite, appeared, as she departed for the airport. My friend told us, "If you have to get out, close all the doors...

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