As dazed villagers in the Peloponnese picked over the charred ruins of their homes and farms and smoke was rising from the birthplace of the Olympic Games, the Greeks are wondering how such a national catastrophe could be allowed to happen.

In four days of incessant wild fires, at least 63 people have been killed and untold acres of pine woods, olive groves and farmland have gone up in smoke. At this writing, a couple of dozen blazes are still in progress around the country, straining the firefighting services that have been taking a lot of blame for slowness and inefficiency.

Twenty-five Israeli volunteer firemen today took up positions in and around ancient Olympia, where the Olympic Games got started in 776 BC. The once-sacred precinct was scarcely recognisable. The grass banks of the excavated original stadium were charred. The adjacent Mount of Kronion, a picturesque pine-clad height on which the ancient spectators sat and cheered, was a smoking, blackened heap.

By some miracle, the modernist Olympic Museum was saved, along with its chief exhibit, the priceless 4th century BC statue of Hermes by Praxiteles.

As the walls of flame gradually subsided, leaving misery and mourning in their wake, the blame game was well and truly on. Greece's conservative government, hoping for re-election next month, says the great majority of fires were deliberate, set by "criminal elements" intent on causing chaos and social unrest ahead of the election. In the government's view, the opposition socialists are keen to portray the emergency services as bumbling and inefficient and are not above making political hay out of the fires.

The other theory is that property developers, taking advantage of lax law enforcement, set fires to clear land on which to build expensive properties. Earlier this year the government unveiled a bill slashing the red tape needed for tourism-related investments, including holiday home complexes.

Such arson more often than not is rewarded. In the past 12 years there have been dozens of fires, for example, on Mount Pendeli north of Athens. After the fires, posh villas have sprouted. Of the more than 4,000 demolition orders for such villas issued by the governments of the day since 1995, not one has been carried out.

One thing is clear: whichever government emerges from the September 16 elections, public opinion will force it to enact serious environmental protection measures which Greece has sorely needed for a long time.

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