Firefighters continued to battle wildfires fueled by heatwaves in Greece on Monday after tens of thousands of tourists were evacuated from the Turkish island of Rhodes in an unprecedented situation, AFP reported.

On the popular tourist island of Corfu, a forest fire led to the “precautionary evacuation of 2,466 people”, both locals and tourists, between Sunday night and Monday, fire brigade spokesman Yannis Artopios said.

At the same time, he emphasized that no house or hotel has been destroyed so far.

Greece is “waging a war against (…) fires,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a speech to parliament, before warning: “We have three more difficult days ahead” of high temperatures.

It was even necessary to cancel the annual holidays in the country in honor of the restoration of democracy in 1974.

Greece has been hit by one of the longest heatwaves in decades, with local temperatures exceeding 46 degrees on Sunday, and has been hit by wildfires since last week, as it is every summer.

Shelter in schools

A fire that ravaged Rhodes in the southeastern Aegean forced the evacuation of more than 32,000 tourists on Saturday in what authorities said was “the biggest operation (of its kind) ever carried out in Greece”.

Many others were placed overnight in gyms or schools.

On Monday, this Dodecanese island was covered in thick smoke and the hills were covered in charred vegetation.

At dawn, two helicopters and two water bombers resumed operations to help firefighters battling the blaze for the seventh straight day.

The National Meteorological Agency (EMY) announced on Monday that the heatwave will intensify next day, especially on Wednesday, when temperatures are expected to reach 44C.

On Wednesday afternoon, “storms are expected in the center and west of the country, before temperatures drop to 6-8 degrees Celsius”, the EMY added.

“While the Rhodes fires are not unusual in southern Europe, what is unusual about the Rhodes fires is their intensity and the speed with which they spread,” said Douglas Kelly of the UK’s Center for Ecology and Hydrology.

• Read also: Fires are still burning in Rhodes, and dozens of other fires have broken out across the country / Greeks have opened an office for tourists who have lost their documents at the international airport of Rhodes (press)

Fires in Rhodes (Photo: Christophe Gateau / DPA / Profimedia)

“Terrible” situation

British woman Kelly Squirrel told how the police ordered to evacuate the hotel where she was staying.

“I had to go without stopping. We walked for about six hours in the heat,” she told AFP after arriving at Rhodes International Airport, which now resembles a makeshift camp with seasonal workers spread out on beach towels and tourists in bathing suits slumped on chairs.

Among the tourists waiting for repatriation, 42-year-old German Daniel-Kladin Schimdt, who was vacationing with his wife and nine-year-old son in the southeast of the island, experienced a “nightmare evacuation.”

“We are exhausted and traumatized. I don’t think we really understand what happened,” he told AFP.

“We got the first message from the authorities on Saturday at 1:30 p.m., then the alarm went off in the hotel and we were evacuated to the beach.” “There were thousands of people there (…). We had to walk for more than two hours (…). We couldn’t breathe so we covered our faces to keep moving. It was a miracle.”

Kevin Sales, a British engineer, described the “terrible” situation to AFP. “We had to borrow my wife’s clothes from a woman because she had nothing to wear.”

Expected to welcome 2.5 million visitors in 2022, Rhodes is one of Greece’s top holiday destinations with numerous hotels along the east coast.

Tourists at the airport in Greece (Photo: Will Vassilopoulos / AFP / Profimedia Images)

Run on the beach

In Corfu, authorities issued a telephone warning for residents of several small towns and for tourists to leave their homes “as a precautionary measure”.

The fire broke out on Sunday and continues to burn a forest in the north of the island in the Ionian Sea, where about 62 firefighters, supported by two helicopters and two water bombers, were mobilized on Monday.

Having just returned to Germany with other compatriots who escaped from Rhodes, Lena Schwartz talked about the “hell” she experienced there.

“To escape the fire, we had to walk ten kilometers with all our luggage in 42°C temperatures,” the 38-year-old woman told AFP in the airport lobby in Hanover (north).

Germans make up one of the largest contingents of tourists who come to Rhodes in the summer, along with the English and the French.

Many German tourists remembered with horror the circumstances of their departure for the weekend.

Faced with flames approaching her hotel, 50-year-old Oksana Neb “ran to the beach” with her suitcases, which she eventually abandoned before continuing on…