Thousands of people have been evacuated from the wildfire-ravaged Greek island of Rhodes. Many hotels have been evacuated. Ferries and buses carried vacationers.
According to media reports, thousands of people have already been evacuated from the Greek holiday island of Rhodes due to a massive fire. Greek state radio said in a special program that 8,000 people had left the south of the island, popular with tourists, by land. A total of 30,000 people were brought to safety from the affected areas.
Thousands of tourists on the island
According to the German Travel Association, Germans are also affected by the measures. “There are currently around 20,000 German holidaymakers on the island with tour operators, with only a small number affected by the evacuation,” a spokesman said.
A massive forest fire has gotten out of control in Rhodes. By late afternoon the flames had reached the south of the famous archaeological site of Lindos. There are dozens of hotels that are fully booked this time of year. Two villages and several hotels were evacuated.
Residents and tourists were also evacuated by boats.
According to the Greek Coast Guard, more than 30 private vessels are involved in the evacuation. People were taken from the beaches of Kyotari and Lardos in the east of the Mediterranean island. They were taken to another safe beach on the island.
Residents of four towns were asked to move to safer places through SMS. Buses were also used to evacuate tourists from the area. The evacuation continued on Sunday night.
The fire, which has been raging since Tuesday, was initially confined to the mountainous center of the island. Later it spread towards the coast in the center and east of Rhodes. Media reported that three hotels were engulfed in flames. “This is a very difficult fire that we have had to deal with,” said a spokesman for the Greek Fire Brigade.
The size of the fire can be estimated from the air.
Fear of record heat wave
Temperatures up to 45 degrees Celsius are expected in the south of the country on Sunday, according to the Meteorological Department. In the central Greek city of Larissa, the thermometer read 44 degrees on Saturday afternoon.
In northern Greece too, many places had values of around 40 degrees. Even the Aegean islands have temperatures above 38 degrees. Konstantinos Laguertos, one of the leading Greek meteorologists, estimated on state television that “if things continue like this”, the heat wave will become the longest since measurements were taken in Greece. In July 1987, a similar heat wave killed 1,300 people in Greece.
Meteorologists have said that the heatwave will continue next week with minor fluctuations. A new high is expected on Wednesday with a temperature of 46 degrees in southern Greece.
“The brand will haunt us for days”
Firefighters again warned of the high risk of wildfires. The risk is too high, he said. Fires in the Athens area and the Peloponnese peninsula have been brought under control. But as everything dries up, this fire burns again and again.
“This is not a fire that will burn tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” fire department spokesman Vassilis Tradenogiannis told Sky TV. A fire in Rhodes “will make us hard for days”.
People are suffering from the heat in Athens too.
Assistance from many countries
Meanwhile, hundreds of firefighters from Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and Malta have arrived in Greece to bolster the fire brigade and fight the blaze. France, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and Jordan are helping to fight the blaze with firefighting planes and helicopters, Greek civil defense said.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis thanked Turkey for sending two Turkish firefighting planes and a helicopter to fight the fires in Greece. “Thank you Turkey,” the prime minister said in a tweet. The two NATO countries have come a little closer in the past few weeks after years of fighting.
extreme temperature Also in Italy
In Italy, meteorologists are expecting a new heat wave early next week. Then between Sardinia and Sicily, peak temperatures of 47 to 48 degrees are possible, wrote the weather service Ilmeteo.
The Italian Air Force weather service reported 40 degrees in the afternoon from Palermo, the capital of Sicily. It was 37 degrees in Rome. It had already recorded 41.8 degrees last Tuesday.
In northern Italy, severe storms followed the summer heat on Friday. Heavy hail from Ceregno in Lombardy. Newspapers showed photographs of hailstones the size of chicken eggs. A man has been injured by lightning while taking shelter under a tree in Verona, media reports said.
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