Tourists forced to flee wildfires as PM warns of ‘difficult’ summer
Firefighters continued to battle wildfires yesterday on the popular Greek holiday islands Kos and Chios, where hundreds of tourists and locals were evacuated from their hotels and homes on Monday.
On Kos (inset), in the eastern Aegean near Turkey, locals and visitors in the seaside town of Kardamena were transferred to Antimachia as a precaution on Monday evening.
An estimated 2,000 British tourists were evacuated from hotels on Kos, according to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, with some of them describing “apocalyptic” conditions.
Steve Fenwick, a British tourist in Kos who spent the night on the floor of an indoor basketball court with his family, compared the scene to a film and said the Greek army was handing out blankets, food and water.
Clare Smith, 38, from Edinburgh, who was staying at a hotel outside Kardamena in Kos with her family, told Sky News: “It’s really windy here – it will be like a tinderbox. The sky is covered in smoke. You feel like you’re in the apocalypse, or some sort of war film.”
She said they received alerts on their phones telling them to relocate due to the fires. The family and other hotel guests waited for most of the evening before coaches were sent to pick them up.
The wildfire had mostly abated by yesterday morning, allowing evacuees to return, and there was no damage to buildings, said Christos Efstratiou, deputy governor for the Dodecanese islands.
Meanwhile in western Chios, emergency services ordered people to evacuate their homes, telling them to head to the safety of a nearby beach as the fires approached. More than 140 firefighters, seven planes and three helicopters were involved in trying to tackle the blaze on Monday evening.
A fire department spokesman, Vasilis Vathrakoyiannis, said two firefighters had been lightly injured, while dozens more were heading to the island from Lesbos and Athens.
State-run ERT TV later reported that another two firefighters and a volunteer had suffered non lifethreatening burns.
“The situation remains difficult in Chios and all civil protection forces will make great efforts to limit it,” Mr Vathrakoyiannis said.
He added that in the previous 24-hours, 52 wildfires had broken out across Greece, 44 of which were dealt with in the early stages. An emergency alert has also been issued for Heraklion, the capital of Crete.
At the weekend, firefighters battled three large forest fires near Athens, fanned by strong winds and dry conditions, two of which they managed to bring under control.
The Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, warned: “We have had an exceptionally difficult June regarding weather conditions, with high levels of drought and unusually strong winds for this season,” adding that this summer “is predicted to be particularly dangerous” for wildfires.
Wildfires often break out during the summer months in Greece, but prolonged drought, hotter weather and high winds have combined to increase their frequency and intensity.