Thousands of people fled several Greek islands on Monday as tour companies scrambled to get sun-seekers away from tourist hotspots ravaged by devastating wildfires.
More than 19,000 people were ordered to evacuate Rhodes over the weekend as towering columns of fire and smoke threatened the island’s popular seaside resorts, while its Corfu and Evia noticed similar evacuation orders of their own when wildfires broke out on their shores.
In the midst of the fire, Greek authorities say they have mounted largest forest fire evacuation in their country’s history when buses and boats were filled with terrified tourists. Konstantinos Taraslias, the deputy mayor of Rhodes, told local broadcaster ERT on Monday that the Rhodes fires remained “out of control” despite seven days of continuous firefighting.
Thousands of tourists, especially from Germany and Britain, flock to the islands during the summer months in search of warm weather. But over the past few weeks, dangerously hot and dry conditions in Greece—with temperatures above 104 degrees Fahrenheit—have in turn created conditions for devastating fires.
Reports in the British press on Monday were rife with stories of families forced to spend the night at airport terminals and emergency accommodation centers as travelers waited to get home safely.
“It was a nightmare,” Laura Hall, 30, told the BBC of her experience in Rhodes. She said she said she went for a drink on Saturday even as other areas of the island were being evacuated. “There was ashes in our drinks and we could only see a fire in the distance and a pile of smoke. We were told not to do anything and then all of a sudden our phone rang and the waiter shouted ‘mayday, mayday.’”
Hall said she and her family were evacuated to a basketball stadium, where she slept on the floor with hundreds of other people. Mario Wiese, an Austrian tourist, told Reuters he spent 48 hours at Rhodes airport and had to arrange his own flight home on Monday night. “We’ve been lying here for two days,” he said. “No blankets, nothing. “There are children lying here who need milk.”
British couple Ali and Paul Simpson, both 42, said they were sailing in southern Rhodes when they became trapped near the blaze. “It was absolutely horrible,” Ali said, according to Mirror. “We are on the boat and back to the hotel. And literally our entire hotel had fire, fire, and we only had to run on the beach for three hours. We run and we run. We are petrified.” She said they were eventually picked up by a military truck and taken to safety.
George Tsunchnikas, an Englishman of Greek descent, said on Monday that he is sheltering 14 tourists from four countries in his home on the island as they await evacuation. “People are doing what they can, but you’re fighting an unpredictable enemy,” he told BBC radio. “You don’t know which way the fire is going, where the wind is going.”
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis used similar war-like rhetoric when he addressed parliament on Monday. “This battle is uneven and it will continue to be so as long as conditions remain extreme,” he said, warning that temperatures in Rhodes were not expected to drop for another three days. “We are fighting the fire and we will rebuild everything lost, will compensate anyone affected.”
The disaster on the Greek islands comes as other parts of Europe are facing record heat. Unusually high temperatures are also causing health warnings in the United States and parts of Asia, with a top NASA climatologist warning that July is on track to become the hottest month the world has ever seen in “hundreds, if not thousands of years”.
Scientists have long forecast that climate change will exacerbate prolonged hot, dry weather that can lead to wildfires.
