Still wearing traditional black headdress, a group of elderly Greek women sat in utter despair after fires forced their evacuation from a village that most had hardly left in their lives.

"Policemen forced me to leave my home. I didn't even have time to close up the house or to take any shoes," says Dimitra Agrida, an 85-year-old widow.
"We can't go back up to the village for the time being. At our age we'd choke on the smoke and ashes."

Ms Agrida and her five companions were slumped in chairs in a hotel in Sparta, their temporary home since they were evacuated from the tiny village of Phalaisia in the west of the Peloponnese peninsula on Sunday.

They sat with their backs to the television, unable to watch the pictures of flames scorching a trail across the wooded mountains they know so well.
Ms Agrida urged her friends to be strong, but there were tears in their eyes.

The residents of Phalaisia were lucky - at least 63 people have lost their lives in the fires after villages in southern and central Greece were consumed by flames.
When the fire tore through dried-out forests near Phalaisia, the police moved the villagers from the modest stone homes and olive groves they had tended for decades - even those who had no desire to leave.

Dimitra's friend Iannoula Iannopoulos, 77, who was evacuated with her 85-year-old husband, could not recall the last time she ventured outside Phalaisia.

"There are just 30 people living there and we are all old. What could we do against the flames? We wanted our children to come and help, but the roads were blocked," Ms Iannopoulos said.

One of her sons visited the village after the fires moved on.

"He told us that the house was not damaged, but is that really true?" she said.
A volunteer fireman admitted he had could not bring himself to tell his grandmother that her house in the village of Agrianoi had been badly damaged by the fire.

"Fortunately she was staying with us for a few days (when the fires struck)," said Grigoris Panayotis, 27.

"We keep telling her that everything is all right and in the meantime I'm going to try to repair what I can. The truth would kill her."

The conservative government of Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, facing a general election in less than three weeks' time, has promised financial assistance and grants to rebuild ravaged communities.

But the elderly evacuees were sceptical.

"Fortunately we have families," said one woman.

The hotels of Sparta, in southern Peloponnese, were playing host to about 100 evacuees as the disaster continued to unfold in Greece for a fifth day on Tuesday.

Unable to return home, Ms Iannopoulos was trying to put a brave face on her misfortune.

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