Rescuers carried out “the largest evacuation operation ever carried out in Greece” on the island of Rhodes, where a violent fire raged for the sixth day in a row on Sunday July 23, said the police spokeswoman. ” Everything went well. Everyone, especially the tourists, were doing what we ordered,” Konstantia Dimoglidou pointed out. Some 30,000 people had to leave their respective places of residence – homes or hotels – on Saturday due to the fire raging in the east of this island in the Dodecanese archipelago where the tourist season is in full swing.
According to the police, quoted by the Greek news agency ANA, around 19,000 people were evacuated as a precaution – 16,000 by land, 3,000 by sea. Twelve localities were evacuated, including Lindos, one of the main tourist attractions of the island with its acropolis perched on top of a hill.
Cédric Guisset, a Belgian tourist sheltered on Saturday and interviewed by RTBF radio, explained that he had to leave his hotel on foot without a planned drop-off point after receiving alert messages on his mobile phone. At the hotel, “they didn’t even know, we really just took our identity cards, water, something to cover our faces, our heads”, said this Belgian.
” Unprecedented “
The approximately 30,000 people who had to leave their homes were sheltered in gymnasiums, schools or conference centers for the night. Panagiotis Dimelis, a local elected official from the village of Archangelos, described on Skai TV “an unprecedented situation”.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has opened a crisis cell in Athens to facilitate the repatriation of foreign tourists. The island of Rhodes, which has more than 100,000 inhabitants, is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Greece, with British, German or French tourists. It recorded 2.5 million tourist visits in 2022.
The world number one in tourism, TUI, announced on Sunday suspending all its passenger flights to the island. “Until Tuesday, no more new tourists will be flown in,” assured the German group, adding that empty flights to Rhodes were, however, maintained to be able to evacuate the thousands of tourists still present there and who are affected by the fires. TUI currently has some 40,000 tourists on the island, “of which 7,800 are affected by the fires and had to be evacuated to reception centers or hotels”.
In the United Kingdom, the company Jet2 has also announced that it has canceled “all flights and holiday stays” scheduled for Sunday to Rhodes but plans to send five empty planes there to repatriate its customers still there.
The fight to control the fire will take several more days, according to the authorities. The wind, which is fanning it, “should strengthen between midday and 5 p.m.” local time (4 p.m. Paris time), warned firefighter spokesman Vassilis Vathrakoyiannis. Temperatures above 44°C are expected on Sunday. According to the National Meteorological Observatory, this country is “probably” going through the longest heat wave in its history.