A website and Facebook page have been set up under the name ‘fothkia.com – The voice of Cyprus’ burned mountains’, urging people to sign a petition to force change so that disasters such as last month’s wildfire do not happen again.
“If we don’t shout now, it will happen again. Don’t let them bury this in silence and forgetfulness,” the administrators said on their Fothkia.com Facebook page.
They added that “the mountains of Limassol didn’t just burn from fire – they burned from neglect.”
“Two people dead. Thousands of animals burned alive, screaming for help that never came. Entire villages turned to ash. Homes, memories, lives – all gone. No prevention. No plan. No timely response,” they said.
The petition can be found at https://chng.it/f5wMmJ7ZSk
By noon on Wednesday, the petition had received 185 verified signatures.
“Our voice is our only defence,” the administrators said.
The website contains vast amounts of information about the fire and photographs of the fire and the ruins it left behind.
Information and the petition are in Greek and English.
“A matter of life: They burned us – Don’t let them do it again” comes up on the frontpage of the website, with a call to “protect our mountains, our people, our nature”.
The website administrators said that “in the summer of 2025, the mountainous region of Limassol turned to ash.”
“This disaster wasn’t accidental. It was forewarned and yet no one listened. Residents had been warning for years and no one listened. The 2025 tragedy was not merely a natural disaster. It was the result of years of indifference and criminal negligence.”
The administrators of the website said “the communities of mountainous Limassol – like other mountain regions in Cyprus – had repeatedly, publicly and formally pointed out” various issues that remained unaddressed.
These include “uncleared, highly flammable vegetation around homes, roads and forested areas never removed in time. No evacuation plans and no emergency drills for residents. Neglected fire water tanks – empty, damaged, or left unchecked. No firewatch posts at key monitoring points that could detect smoke or flames early.”
Other issues were “destroyed or non-existent fire hose cabinets – despite EU funding allocated through the Ministry of Agriculture, which was never properly used. Understaffed fire services – exhausted firefighters, lacking proper equipment and backup shifts. Very few local fire stations – long distances and delayed response times. Repeated requests were made for more local stations, so every major village could have its own unit, and every two to three smaller communities could be effectively covered.”
They pointed out missing preventive technology, such as “smoke-detection cameras in every mountain village, especially in Troodos, connected to emergency control centres. Night-capable aerial patrols with large-capacity aircraft equipped to detect heat spots and early risk zones. Permanent Cyprus-based water bombers with full knowledge of local terrain, ready 24/7 – not aircraft arriving late, without a flight plan, and disappearing as soon as night falls, leaving fires to rage overnight.”
“All these documented deficiencies had been officially reported – via memos, letters and public testimony. And yet the state chose silence. Negligence turned to ash. And ash became guilt. These failures are not exclusive to mountainous Limassol.”
They added that “every village and mountainous community in Cyprus deserves equal protection – every life and every forest matters. And all of this, despite the fact that EU funding is available for fire prevention, emergency infrastructure, and reforestation projects – funding that remains underutilised.”
“The money exists. The political will does not.”
The administrators pointed out that the wildfire brought to the surface a multitude of problems, including inadequate ambulance coverage in the mountainous areas and the absence of properly equipped crisis response units.
They said so much flora and fauna were wiped out by the fire and now some species may never return and there is “no restoration plan in place” for the “dead ecosystem”.
And while the cost of restoration is immense and will continue to burden the state, prevention could have been in place for a fraction of the cost, they pointed out.
“The total cost of protecting all of Cyprus’ mountainous regions is less than the cost of recovering from one large fire.”
The administrators list their demands, covering wildfire response, public health and nature restoration.
“We’re not begging – we’re demanding prevention and equality. They only remember us when elections come around […] We don’t want pity and photo ops at the ruins. We are not second-class citizens. We don’t need more words – we need prevention.
They call on the public to sing the petition, “because if we stay silent, they will burn us again, but if we raise our voices together, no one will be able to ignore us again.”
Click here to change your cookie preferences