climate
The forest fires from Rhodes continue to rage – Tui stops vacationers
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.
No relaxation of the situation in sight
Television images showed tourists sleeping on mattresses in gyms on Sunday night. There was a great wave of willingness to help among the residents of Rhodes: Many took tourists into their private accommodations, provided food, water, bed linen and mattresses.
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.
In view of the situation, the Tui travel group is no longer bringing tourists to the holiday island for the time being. However, the flight connections remained in place to fly guests back to Germany, according to Aage Dünhaupt, Head of Communications at Tui Germany. There are similar regulations for the other countries. In addition, many travelers from Germany could cancel their flight. “We offer all guests who have booked to Rhodes by next Friday to rebook to another holiday destination free of charge or to cancel.”
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.
In the course of global warming, the risk of forest fires is increasing in many regions, as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has established. A warmer climate can contribute to more water falling from the sky, also more often in the form of heavy rain. However, the periods without precipitation are becoming longer in some cases. And especially in areas that are already dry, the danger of periods of drought increases. Forest fires can spread faster in extremely dry vegetation.