Crete is the largest island of Greece and the fifth largest in the Mediterranean, lying in the southern Aegean Sea and marking the southern boundary of the Aegean basin. It was the seat of the Minoan civilisation, Europe's earliest known advanced civilisation, centred on the palace complex at Knossos. Today it is one of Greece's most important tourist destinations, which is why wildfire evacuations there routinely involve large numbers of foreign visitors alongside residents. Its mountainous interior and long dry summers make the island highly fire-prone.

The detail that matters operationally is the wind. Gusts of up to 125 km per hour did two things at once: they drove the fire front out to more than 15 kilometres, and they grounded the water-bombing aircraft that are the main tool for containing Mediterranean wildfires. When aerial firefighting is unavailable, ground crews are left to fight a fast-moving front directly, which is how the two firefighters near Krya Vrysi came to be trapped. This pattern of hotter, drier and windier summers lengthening the fire season across southern Europe is one of the most visible signatures of a warming Mediterranean climate.