Thousands of tourists flee wildfire on Greece's Rhodes island

AFP | Rhodes                       

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Tens of thousands of people fled wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes on Sunday as terrified tourists scrambled to get home.

And there were reports of wildfires breaking out on Corfu, another popular Greek island, with land and sea evacuations underway late Sunday.

On Rhodes, firefighters tackled blazes that erupted in peak tourism season, sparking the country's largest-ever wildfire evacuation -- and leaving flights and holidays cancelled.

Hundreds of holidaymakers milled inside Rhodes international airport, some trying to sleep on their beach towels as they waited for flights off the island.

Kelly Squirrel, a transport administrator on holiday from the UK, told AFP she spotted the fires from the poolside and ran down to the beach after being told to evacuate.

"We were walking for about six hours in the heat" to escape, she said.

Rhodes is one of Greece's most popular holiday destinations, particularly with British, German and French tourists. In the rush to leave, some visitors had to abandon their belongings.

"We had to lend a woman some of my wife's clothes because she had nothing to wear," Kevin Sales, an engineer from England, told AFP. "It was terrible."

- Fires on other islands -

Other Greek islands were reporting similar problems.

A wildfire broke out on Greece's second-largest island, Evia, according to the fire services, and several residential areas had to be evacuated.

Evia, situated off central Greece's eastern coast, was devastated last year by some of the worst wildfires in the country's history.

And several hundred miles to the northwest, the Greek island of Corfu, another favourite with foreign tourists, was struggling with its own wildfires Sunday evening.

Officials on the island, which sits in the Ionian sea off the northwest of Greece, have already issued evacuation alerts for 12 villages there, the Athens News Agency reported.

The coast guard there said a rescue operation was underway at Nissaki beach on the northeast of the island, due to a wild fire.

Six coastguard vessels and seven private boats had already taken 59 people off the beach.

- Holiday flights cancelled -

Greece has been battered by an extended spell of extreme heat and fires have burned for nearly a week on Rhodes.

On Rhodes, winds of up to 49 kilometres (31 miles) per hour complicated efforts to bring the flames under control.

"This is the biggest fire evacuation ever in Greece," Konstantia Dimoglidou, Greek police spokeswoman told AFP of the Rhodes operation. "We had to evacuate an area of 30,000 people."

Police said the authorities had transported 16,000 people across land, and evacuated 3,000 by sea. Others had to flee by road or used their own transport after being told to leave the area.

German travel giant Tui said it was suspending all its inbound passenger flights to Rhodes until Tuesday but would send empty planes to help evacuate tourists.

Spokesperson Linda Jonczyk told AFP that Tui had some 40,000 tourists in Rhodes, of which 7,800 are affected by the fires.

The low-cost British carrier Jet2 also said it had cancelled "all flights and holidays" to the island.

Authorities have warned that the battle to contain the flames will take several days.

More than 260 firefighters, backed by 18 aircraft, were battling the fire on Sunday, with Croatia, France, Slovakia and Turkey having contributed equipment and personnel, officials said.

Last year Rhodes, which has a population of over 100,000, welcomed some 2.5 million tourists.

The fires reached the village of Laerma during the night, engulfing houses and a church, while many hotels were damaged by flames that had reached the coast. The authorities evacuated 11 villages overnight as a precaution.

On Sunday the blaze was burning along three active fronts -- including on the southeast coast of the island where firefighters tried to prevent the blaze from crossing a creek.

- 'Leave everything' -

Tourists and some locals spent the night in gyms, schools and hotel conference centres on the island.

The Greek foreign ministry and embassies in Greece were setting up a station at the Rhodes airport to help tourists who have lost travel documents in the scramble to evacuate.

TV footage broadcast by ERT Saturday showed a lone woman carrying her luggage through the smoke, looking disorientated.

Firefighters were heard shouting at her: "Madam, your life! Come here! Leave everything behind.'

A large part of the island was without electricity as the public power utility PPC shut down the local plant in the south for safety reasons.

"This is a special fire here because the heart of Rhodes and its environment is affected," Efthymios Lekkas, a professor specialising in natural disasters told ERT TV on Sunday, warning of a severe impact to the island's tourist industry.

"All the big hotels have closed. I don't think they will be able to operate this year because the surrounding area in each unit has been completely destroyed, and the environment is not inspiring for a holiday."