Tourists flown home as wildfires rage on Greek islands
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[July 24, 2023]
By Fedja Grulovic
RHODES, Greece (Reuters) -Tour operators began flying home holidaymakers
as wildfires raged on the Greek island of Rhodes on Monday and officials
said the threat of further fires was high in almost every region of the
country.
Fires burning since Wednesday on Rhodes forced the evacuation of 19,000
people over the weekend as an inferno reached coastal resorts on the
island's southeast. A wildfire also forced evacuations from the island
of Corfu.
Rhodes and Corfu are among Greece's top destinations for tourists mainly
from Britain and Germany.
"We are in the seventh day of the fire and it hasn't been controlled,"
Rhodes Deputy Mayor Konstantinos Taraslias told state broadcaster ERT.
Tourists spent the night on the airport floor, waiting for repatriation
flights, the first of which came overnight.
Holiday company TUI's UK and Ireland arm said it brought three plane
loads of passengers back to Britain from Rhodes and had plans to get
everyone affected back as soon as possible.
"It was quite a bit of a struggle on the beach with the smoke," said
John Hope, a tourist from Manchester, England.
Austrian tourist Mario Wiese said he had spent two days at Rhodes
airport and had had to sort out his own return flight to Germany on
Monday evening.
"We have been lying here for two days. There are no blankets, nothing.
There are children lying here who need milk," he said. "I had to
organise everything myself because no one looks after us here. I don't
understand it."
REPATRIATION FLIGHTS
Tour operators Jet2, TUI and Corendon cancelled flights leaving for
Rhodes. Britain's easyJet said it was operating two repatriation flights
on Monday from Rhodes to London's Gatwick airport in addition to the
nine flights already operating between the island and Gatwick.
The airline said it will add another repatriation flight on Tuesday.
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Smoke rises from a wildfire on Corfu
Island, Greece, July 23, 2023 in this still image obtained from
social media video. Julia Dzhyzhevska/via REUTERS
Ryanair said its flights to and from Rhodes were operating as
normal. Its Chief Financial Officer Neil Sorahan said the airline
was monitoring the situation on Monday.
"It's not necessary at this period in time (to put on more flights),
we're letting people book onto earlier flights."
Evacuations by sea were underway on Corfu, where about 59 people
were taken off a beach on Sunday. Footage from the island showed the
skyline ablaze from fires in a mountain region.
On Rhodes, some holidaymakers said they walked for miles in
scorching heat to reach safety. The fires left blackened trees and
dead animals lay in the road near burnt-out cars.
Greece is often hit by wildfires during the summer months but
climate change has led to more extreme heatwaves across southern
Europe.
Civil Protection said practically every region of Greece was facing
the threat of wildfires on Monday ranging from "high, very high or
state of alert".
Temperatures over the past week have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius
(104 degrees Fahrenheit) in many parts of the country and were
forecast to persist in the coming days.
Emergency services were also dealing with fires on the island of
Evia, east of Athens, and Aigio, southwest of Athens.
(Additional reporting by Karolina Tagaris, Renee Maltezou and
Angeliki Koutantou in Athens, Michele Kambas in Nicosia, Padraic
Halpin in Dublin and Sarah Young in London; Writing by Philip
Blenkinsop; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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