dpa
Athens
The forest fires on the Greek holiday island of Rhodes escalated out of control on Saturday, forcing hundreds of tourists to be evacuated, authorities reported.
Athens announced in the evening that eight people had been taken to hospital with respiratory problems.
The fire on the island that had been raging on for four days, surprised the fire brigade when the wind changed its direction, a spokesman said.
Winds of force six are blowing in the Rhodes region. “The smoke formation is so strong that you can hardly breathe. People are being taken to the small town of Gennadi, from where they will be moved to other hotels,” Konstantinos Traraslias, deputy mayor of Rhodes, told Athens news channel Skai.
“It is the most difficult fire we have to fight,” a spokesman for the Greek fire department said about the fire raging near the village of Laerma.
According to the coast guard 1,500 people, mainly tourists, were brought to safety with boats from the beaches after escape routes were cut off.
The tourists are reportedly being accommodated in hotels and a basketball court, while hundreds of residents also volunteered to help, said state television.
Meanwhile, the sweltering heatwave rages on. Some places in the north of Greece registered up to 40 degrees Celsius on Saturday.
Temperatures of up to 45 degrees are expected in southern Greece this weekend, while the north already saw readings around 40 degrees in many places on Saturday. Even on most of the Aegean islands, temperatures will exceed 38 degrees. One of Greece’s leading meteorologists, Konstantinos Lagouvardos, estimated on state television that this heatwave, “if it continues,” could become the longest since records began. In July 1987, a similar heatwave killed around 1,300 people in Greece.
As sparks can cause or worsen wildfires in dry conditions, the fire brigade repeated warnings of a high risk of forest fires. “We are facing even more difficult times,” a spokesman for the fire brigade told state television on Saturday morning. Fires in the Athens area and on the Peloponnese peninsula have been brought under control, he said. But they keep flaring up because everything has dried up, he added.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Saturday thanked Turkey for sending two Turkish firefighting planes and a helicopter to help with Greece’s wildfires.
“Thank you Türkiye,” he wrote on Twitter.
