Thousands flee Rhodes blaze in Greece’s largest ever bushfire evacuation

Terrified holiday-makers walked for hours to escape the flames and others were rescued from beaches as fires consumed Rhodes at the height of the tourist season.

People watch the fires near the village of Malona in the Greek island of Rhodes. Picture: AFP.

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

Firefighters tackled blazes that erupted in peak tourism season, sparking the country’s largest-ever bushfire evacuation – and leaving flights and holidays cancelled.

Hundreds of holiday-makers 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 were forced 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, said. “It was terrible.”

Families who evacuated to hotels north of the fire had to move again as strong winds swept the flames further north up the coast.

A firefighter tries to extinguish a fire burning near the village Vlyhada near Athens. Picture: Getty Images.

Others were rescued off the beaches by locals in small boats. “It was like Dunkirk,” Malcolm McCarthy, 65, from south London, told The London Times. “There were hundreds of people on the beach. It was all local boat owners coming to rescue us from the flames. The smoke was everywhere, we had to cover our mouths with clothes and we had masks for the kids. One girl, who was 15, had a panic attack.”

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

We are safe for now. The scariest moment in my entire life. After wading into the sea and climbing on a fishing trawler, we are away from danger. I don’t know how they’ll process this when the dust settles, but what brave boys. 😢 💙 Family is everything #rhodes#wildfirepic.twitter.com/YGkcMaHMpg

— Dan Jones (@DanJonesPE) July 22, 2023

Winds of up to 49 kilometres per hour were complicating efforts to bring the flames under control.

“This is the biggest fire evacuation ever in Greece,” Konstantia Dimoglidou, Greek police spokeswoman said. “We had to evacuate an area of 30,000 people.” Police said the authorities had transported 16,000 people across land, and evacuated 3000 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 said Tui had some 40,000 tourists in Rhodes, of which 7800 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 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 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.

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.

“I just did a drive from Lindos to Gennadi,” he said.

“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.” The Greek presidency said it was cancelling a national holiday planned for Monday “in view of the extraordinary conditions prevailing in the country due to the fires.” A separate wildfire broke out on Greece’s second-largest island, Evia, according to the fire services, and several residential areas had to be evacuated there.

Evia, situated off central Greece’s eastern coast, was devastated last year by some of the worst fires 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 bushfires 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.

AFP