Anger Over Fires Clouds Greek Election

A Greek orthodox priest looks on during a fire in the village of Thisoa, in the Peloponnese, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of Athens, Greece, Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2007. The country's worst forest fires in living memory have killed at least 64 people since they began five days ago, ravaging olive groves, forest and orchards and incinerating homes, wild animals and livestock. Southern Greece, where the flames reached the birthplace of the Olympic Games in Ancient Olympia, was by far the worst affected. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris) (Petros Giannakouris - AP)

ATHENS, Greece -- Cooling temperatures and lighter winds on Wednesday helped thousands of firefighters control wildfires that have ravaged Greece in the past week and killed at least 64 people.

Hundreds of people who lost homes, property, farms and livestock crowded into banks in southern Greece to receive up to $17,732 per family in aid promised by the conservative government, which has been criticized for mishandling the firefighting effort. Polls indicated growing anger with the government ahead of early elections announced by Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis for Sept. 16.

There were no initial estimates on the cost to the economy from the fires, which began Aug. 23 and have destroyed a large part of the southern Peloponnese peninsula _ where most of the blazes were concentrated.

The temperatures in the region near the fires fell to about 82 on Wednesday compared with nearly 106 last week.

Improved weather allowed firefighters to corral most fires into smaller, more controllable blazes, fire department spokesman Nikos Diamandis said. All major blazes were "generally receding," he said.

"There is a serious danger for the next several days that fires will rekindle, so major firefighting resources will remain deployed," he added.

Firefighting efforts concentrated on the hard-hit island of Evia north of Athens and the Peloponnese.

In northern Greece, at least two fires were burning out of control near the border with Albania, while on Evia, all fires were under control, the fire department said.

"The work of extinguishing the fires continues inside the containment perimeter," Diamandis said.

Twenty-one countries have sent firefighters to help battle Greece the blazes.

A succession of heat waves since early summer and winds often of gale force had turned much of Greece into a tinderbox and hampered efforts to extinguish fires, which often erupted as fast as they were put out.

The fire department has not announced an overall damage assessment, but independent estimates say around 495,000 acres of forest, olive groves and scrub may have been consumed _ the worst since official records started in the 1950s.