Wildfires rage, more tourists fly out

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned of tough days ahead on Tuesday as ministers met to discuss a response to wildfires that have destroyed homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of tourists from the island of Rhodes.

Firefighters battled blazes that have raged on the island since Wednesday and more emergency flights were due to land to fly home holidaymakers.

Mitsotakis told parliament on Monday the country was “at war” and said on Tuesday the next days would be difficult, with conditions possibly improving after Thursday.

“All of us are standing guard,” he said at the start of the cabinet meeting.

“I will state the obvious: in the face of what the entire planet is facing, especially the Mediterranean which is a climate change hot-spot, there is no magical defence mechanism, if there was we would have implemented it.”

An assessment by scientists published on Tuesday said human-induced climate change has played an “absolutely overwhelming” role in the extreme heatwaves that have swept across North America, southern Europe and China this month.

In Greece, a prosecutor on Rhodes launched an investigation into the causes of the fires and the preparedness and response of authorities, state broadcaster ERT said. It said about 10% of the island’s land area had burned.

The broadcaster said there were three active fire fronts on Rhodes and that fire-fighting aircraft were in operation.

‘Unprecedented ordeal’

Lefteris Laoudikos, whose family owns a small hotel in the seaside resort town of Kiotari, one of the epicentres of the fire over the weekend, said its 200 guests – mainly from Germany, Britain and Poland – evacuated in rental cars.

He said his father, cousin and two others were trying to douse the flames using a nearby water tank.

“On Saturday when I saw the wind and that there were no planes, I told everyone ‘we’re going to burn today,’” he said.

“My father saved the hotel. I called him, and he didn’t want to leave. He told me ‘if I leave there will be no hotel’.”

John Hatzis, who is on the board of the Hellenic hoteliers federation and owns three unaffected hotels in northern Rhodes, said the island urgently needed to rebuild and welcome back tourists.

“After the superhuman efforts to contain the fire we need superhuman efforts to restart tourism now,” he said.

Rhodes, one of Greece’s biggest islands, is among its top summer destinations, attracting about 1.5 million foreign tourists in the summer months.

About 20,000 people had to leave homes and hotels in Rhodes over the weekend as the inferno spread and reached coastal resorts on the verdant island’s southeast, after charring land, killing animals and damaging buildings. No one has died.

After a blaze in the seaside town of Mati, east of Athens, in 2018 killed 104 people, Greece has taken a more proactive approach towards evacuations. But critics say it has not improved its ability to put out fires that are common in summer, though more intense in this year’s heatwave.

Hundreds of firefighters, helped by forces from Turkey and Slovakia, battled blazes close to the villages of Gennadi and Vati in the southeast of Rhodes as the wildfires resurged in hot, windy conditions.

Rhodes mayor said on Facebook the island was facing an unprecedented ordeal.

“A week of back-to-back battles in an asymmetric war with an unprecedented scope and intensity of fire,” he wrote.

There were also fires on the islands of Corfu and Evia. Civil protection authorities warned of extreme risk of wildfires in Rhodes and on the island of Crete on Tuesday.

Greece has seen very high temperatures in recent weeks and they are set to rise through Wednesday to exceed 44 Celsius in some areas.

More than 2,000 holidaymakers had returned home by plane on Monday and tour operators cancelled upcoming trips. TUI dropped flights to Rhodes through Friday. It said it had 39,000 customers on Rhodes as of Sunday evening.

Tourism accounts for 18% of Greece’s economic output and one in five jobs. On Rhodes and many other Greek islands, reliance on tourism is even greater [Reuters].