climate
The forest fires from Rhodes continue to rage
People leave a forest fire area on Rhodes. Several fires continue to rage on the Greek island. photo
© Lefteris Damianidis/InTime News/AP/dpa
Several forest fires are raging on Rhodes. Many people had to spend the night outdoors. The Greek government wants to help tourists leave the country.
The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs has at the island’s airport Rhodes has set up a hotspot where tourists can obtain an exit permit unbureaucratically if they no longer have their identity papers due to the large forest fires on the island. This is reported by the Greek state broadcaster ERT. Many people would have had to flee from the fire and may not have had time to take their belongings with them.
According to the Greek government, 19,000 people from villages and hotels have been brought to safety since Saturday because of the severe forest fires on the holiday island of Rhodes. This was announced by the office of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the morning. It is the largest evacuation operation that has ever taken place in Greece. According to initial police estimates, 16,000 people had been brought to safety by land and 3,000 people by sea from beaches.
As a precaution, twelve villages and all hotels in the affected regions have been evacuated. The region around the holiday resort of Lindos with its famous 4th-century Acropolis, which is popular with tourists, was particularly affected.
The danger remains high
Most of the people are said to have been taken to the north of the island, where some were temporarily housed in gyms and schools, on ferries and also privately with islanders. Meanwhile, new holiday planes landed, as the vice mayor of the island of Thanasis Virinis told the TV channel Mega.
Meanwhile, the fires continued to rage and there is no relief in sight – especially since it is said to continue to be very windy: A spokesman for the fire brigade spoke to the state broadcaster ERT of three major fronts. These are fires around the resort of Kiotari, the village of Apollona and the Gadoura reservoir.
The Greek civil protection crisis team has set up two telephone numbers for foreign visitors if they are missing relatives. They are +30 210 3681259 and +30 210 3681350, as the authority announced on Twitter. In addition, warnings of an extremely high risk of forest fires continue to be issued for large parts of Greece. In addition to Rhodes, the highest alert level five also applied to central Greece, the west and north-east of the Peloponnese peninsula and the greater Athens area and the island of Euboea. For days, a strong heat wave with temperatures of over 40 degrees in many places has had the country under control. Even before that it had been hot and dry for a long time.