Still no all-clear for the Greek holiday island of Rhodes: heat and wind make extinguishing work more difficult. According to the government, 19,000 people were evacuated. International reinforcements are on site.
According to the Greek government, 19,000 people from villages and hotels have been brought to safety since yesterday because of severe forest fires on the holiday island of Rhodes. This was announced by the office of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. It is the largest evacuation operation that has ever taken place in Greece.
According to initial police estimates, 16,000 people had been evacuated by land and 3,000 people by sea from beaches. As a precaution, this has so far affected twelve villages and all hotels in the affected regions, such as the area around the holiday resort of Lindos, which is popular with tourists, with its fourth-century acropolis.
On the coast south of the archaeological site of Lindos, numerous hotels were evacuated, and the residents of several towns had to leave their homes.
According to the German Travel Association, German holidaymakers are also affected by the evacuations. Most of the people are said to have been taken to the north of the island, where some are temporarily accommodated in gyms and schools, on ferries and also privately.
This man and this child also had to leave an area on Rhodes.
First more holiday planes landed
The fire brigade has been fighting the forest fires on the island for six days now. The fire brigade reported on Thursday that they were under control. Strong winds picked up on Saturday and drove the flames directly towards the villages and holiday regions that were now affected.
The extreme weather conditions make it difficult to extinguish the fire. Temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius prevail in many places. An easing of the situation is not in sight for the time being, there should still be strong winds.
A representative of the fire brigade spoke to the state broadcaster ERT of three major fronts. The fires are around the resort of Kiotari, the village of Apollona and the Gadoura reservoir. Despite the development, new leisure airlines landed, the island’s deputy mayor, Thanasis Virinis, told TV channel Mega.
These evacuees are sitting on a truck in Kiotari.
International reinforcement
Because of the forest fire on Rhodes, but also other large fires in Greece, hundreds of firefighters from Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and Malta have now traveled to reinforce. France, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and Jordan are taking part in the extinguishing work with firefighting planes and helicopters, the Greek civil defense announced.
The authority warned of an extremely high risk of forest fires for large parts of Greece today. The highest alert level five applied – except for Rhodes – also to central Greece, the west and north-east of the Peloponnese peninsula as well as the greater Athens area and the island of Euboea.
“We have even harder times ahead of us”
According to the meteorologists, the heat wave will continue – with small fluctuations – also in the coming week. A new high is expected for Wednesday, with temperatures around 46 degrees Celsius in southern Greece. “We have even more difficult times ahead of us,” said a fire department spokesman.
“We will probably experience a 16- or 17-day heatwave that our country has never seen before,” Kostas Lagouvardos, research director at the national weather observatory, told ERT.
Extreme weather also in Spain and Italy
Other southern European countries are also affected by the extreme weather. For Cordoba in Andalusia, for example, the Spanish weather service Aemet predicted up to 40 degrees Celsius today. In the capital Madrid, the temperature could climb to more than 35 degrees in the afternoon.
It will also remain hot in southern and central Italy. According to newspaper reports, 46.4 degrees were measured yesterday in Syracuse in south-eastern Sicily. For the new week, the meteorologists expect record temperatures of up to 48 degrees Celsius. Severe storms swept across the north of the country yesterday. According to the Ansa news agency, 14 people were injured in the province of Ravenna.
With information from Elisabeth Pongratz, ARD Rome