Global Courant
Residents and tourists have fled hotspots on the Greek island of Rhodes as firefighters, aided by water jets and helicopters, battle a blaze that sparked the country’s largest-ever fire evacuation.
Wind gusts of up to 49 km/h hampered efforts to control the flames on Sunday.
The island of Rhodes is one of Greece’s most popular holiday destinations, especially among British, German and French tourists – many of whom were quickly removed from the path of the flames.
As Greece has been ravaged by a prolonged period of extreme heat, flames have been burning on the island for almost a week. Temperatures, which reached 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) in central Greece on Sunday, were expected to drop Monday before the mercury rises again for another four-day heat wave.
“This is the largest fire evacuation ever seen in Greece,” Konstantia Dimoglidou, spokeswoman for the Greek police, told AFP news agency.
“We had to evacuate an area of 30,000 people.”
Police said authorities had transported some 16,000 people by land, with 3,000 evacuated by sea, while others fled by road or private transport after being ordered to leave the area.
Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker told Mandra that the biggest challenge was the wind pushing the flames over large areas of land and reigniting them.
“All over the country the alarm has been red for days because the risk of fires is so great,” says Dekker.
Flights suspended
German travel giant Tui said it suspended all its inbound passenger flights to Rhodes until Tuesday, but would fly in empty planes to help evacuate tourists.
Spokeswoman Linda Jonczyk said Tui had some 40,000 tourists in Rhodes, of which 7,800 were affected by the fires.
British low-cost airline Jet2 also said it had canceled “all flights and holidays” to the island.
A German tourist told Bild daily that they were “rescued from the fire at the last minute” after returning from the beach to an abandoned hotel on Saturday.
“Embers flew around our heads and no help was in sight,” says 23-year-old Paul from Bielefeld.
“I felt like I was on my own. It was so hot and the smoke was so thick we couldn’t have survived even 10 minutes.”
He said buses then arrived to evacuate the tourists, but some were so panicked they tried to find boats to escape from the beach.
Authorities have warned it will take several days to contain the flames.
More than 260 firefighters, supported by 18 aircraft, battled the blaze on Sunday, with Croatia, France, Slovakia and Turkey contributing equipment and personnel, officials said.
Last year Rhodes, which has more than 100,000 inhabitants, welcomed about 2.5 million tourists.
The fires reached the village of Laerma overnight, engulfing houses and a church, while many hotels were damaged by flames that had reached the coast. Authorities evacuated eleven villages overnight as a precaution.
On Sunday, the blaze was raging along three active fronts — including on the southeast coast of the island, where firefighters tried to stop it from crossing a creek.
Smoke rises from a burnt-out hotel complex during a wildfire on the Greek island of Rhodes (Eurokinissi/AFP)
‘A special fire’
Tourists and some locals spent the night in gyms, schools and hotel conference centers on the island.
The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and embassies in Greece were setting up a station at Rhodes airport to help tourists who have lost travel documents in the struggle to evacuate.
TV footage broadcast by Greece’s public broadcaster ERT on Saturday showed a solo woman carrying her luggage through the smoke and looking disoriented.
The UK Foreign Office has sent a rapid-deployment team of five ministry staff and four British Red Cross aid workers to Rhodes to support British nationals on the island, a government spokesman said on Sunday.
“We are actively monitoring the fires in Rhodes and are in close contact with local authorities,” the spokesman said in a statement.
“The FCDO (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) has deployed a Rapid Deployment Team (RDT) of five FCDO staff and four British Red Cross aid workers to Rhodes to support British nationals whose safety is our top priority. They will be based at Rhodes International Airport.”
Much of the island was without electricity when public power company PPC closed its local power station in the south for safety reasons.
“This is a special fire here because the heart of Rhodes and its surroundings are being affected,” Efthymios Lekkas, a professor specializing in natural disasters, told ERT on Sunday, warning of a serious impact on the island’s tourism industry.
“I just took a ride from Lindos to Gennadi,” he said.
“All major hotels are closed. I don’t think they will be able to operate this year because the environment of each unit has been completely destroyed and the environment is not inspiring for a holiday.”
The Greek presidency said it was canceling a national holiday scheduled for Monday “because of the extraordinary circumstances in the country following the fires”.
According to the fire service, a separate wildfire broke out on Greece’s second largest island, Evia, although it was not near any houses.
Evia, located on the east coast of central Greece, was devastated last year by some of the worst wildfires in the country’s history.
A man tries to put out a forest fire burning in Kiotari, on the island of Rhodes, Greece (Lefteris Damianidis/Reuters)