Greek villagers fight fires with garden hoses

ZACHARO, Greece (Reuters) - Terrified Greek villagers used garden hoses and buckets in a futile effort to stop raging flames from reaching their homes on Saturday, as the country's worst fires in decades killed 46 people.

"It's a catastrophe of biblical proportions. It's ridiculous that there is no protection for the people here," said Stathis Kokaliaris, a resident of the hardest hit region of Zacharo.

The fires started on Friday near Zacharo, a town of about 7,000 people, surrounded by picturesque villages on the west coast of the southern Peloponnese peninsula.

But soon several fronts appeared in other areas, some more than 160 km (100 miles) away and by Saturday, the fire brigade said it was battling nearly 90 separate fires across the country.

Under skies darkened by thick smoke, some locals stood and watched helplessly as towering flames scorched thousands of acres of forest and olive groves, passing unhindered through their farms and villages.

Some made desperate pleas to television stations for the thinly-stretched fire brigade to come and help.

"Hell is in Zacharo," a desperate villager told Greek television. "Firefighting planes have not arrived yet. There is nothing but fire."

People hugged and cried as ambulances carried body bags to hospitals and some looked for loved ones in burnt houses and cars that littered the roads.

Rescue workers were shocked to find the bodies of a mother, still clutching her children, and a grandmother with her two grandchildren, among the dead.

The government, facing an election on September 16, declared a state of emergency in the entire country and vowed to financially support the afflicted areas.

"Let (politicians) come here, let them come and see what kind of votes they get," a man who stood watching his restaurant burn in Zacharo told Reuters Television.

Some locals said they were convinced the fires were started by arsonists. Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis said the multiple fire fronts "can't be a coincidence" and pledged to find and punish the culprits.

"This is 100 percent an organized plan to burn everything," Zacharo's mayor, Pantazis Chronopoulos, said. "The fire will only end when it reaches the sea."