Climate: Forest fires on Rhodes continue to rage – thousands flee

2023-07-23 20:46:42

Forest fires on Rhodes continue to rage – thousands flee

Thousands of people are fleeing severe forest fires on the Greek island of Rhodes, including numerous tourists. photo

© Lefteris Damianidis/InTime News/AP/dpa

The fires on the holiday island of Rhodes are not under control. The situation for thousands of tourists is also confusing. Many spent the night outdoors and just want to get away – but how?

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.

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.

What is the situation for vacationers?

What is certain is that thousands of people now want to leave the island – but how? Flights are fully booked, there is hardly any accommodation because in the high season all guesthouses and hotels are full, as are the ferries to the mainland. The Greek state broadcaster ERT reported that the situation was extremely tense. The tourists cannot return to the evacuated villages and hotel complexes for the time being.

Tui announced that it would no longer bring tourists to Rhodes in view of the severe forest fires. However, the flight connections remained in place to fly guests back to Germany, said Aage Dünhaupt, Head of Communications at Tui Germany, the German Press Agency.

In the meantime Rhodes vacationers have already landed in Germany. At Cologne/Bonn Airport, a woman reported: “This morning we got the first ash particles. Then we spontaneously decided to fly home.” It was important that there was a good possibility of getting home on time. “You don’t know how that will develop.” An employee of the aid organization Malteser International said after his return: “The extent of the forest fires is really frightening. And it’s good to see that Europe is helping.”

The Greek civil protection crisis team has set up two telephone numbers for foreign visitors if they are missing relatives. They are [phone] and [phone], 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.

dpa