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The Ministry of Climate Change and Civil Protection said it was the “largest wildfire evacuation operation in the country”.
Local police said 16,000 people had been evacuated by land and 3,000 by sea from 12 villages and several hotels. Six people were briefly hospitalized with respiratory problems and later released. Authorities said the person who fell and broke his leg while evacuating a hotel and a pregnant woman remain in hospital, the latter in good condition.
Holiday package companies TUI and Jet2 have canceled flights to Rhodes. Jet2 said it had canceled five flights scheduled to depart to Rhodes Sunday. She said she would fly the five planes to an empty Rhodes to bring the agents back to the island. TUI said it had canceled all of its flights to the island through at least Tuesday.
British tourist Kevin Evans said the British tourist was evacuated twice on Saturday with his wife and three young children – first from Kiotari to Gennadi, and then as the fire approached the island’s capital in the northeast, he told the Palestinian News Agency.
“There were a lot of people in Gennadi sent from the hotels – many of them were just wearing their bathing suits and they were told to leave everything at the hotel,” he told PA. “As night fell, we could see the fire on top of the hills in Kyotari. They said all the hotels were on fire.”
Rhodes travel agent Stelios Kotadis confirmed to The Associated Press that the evacuation was hasty. “There was panic. “The authorities were exhausted,” he said.
But he said the abandoned hotels are “in a much better condition than what has been reported on social media. … They will be ready to reopen very soon if the Civil Protection gives the go-ahead.”
Kotadis said he and other travel agents have sent buses to the southeast of the island to pick up the evacuating tourists. They had to go a long way, as the road on the eastern side of Rhodes was closed in places.
“There were about 80 to 90 people crammed into the 50-seater buses,” he said. He added that 90% of the evacuated tourists are from European countries.
The British Ambassador to Greece, Matthew Lodge, said the UK government was sending a rapid deployment team to support British nationals in Rhodes.
The Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the staff were on their way to Rhodes to set up a help desk at Rhodes International Airport for visitors who had lost their travel documents.
By early Sunday afternoon, 266 firefighters and 49 engines were working on the ground, along with hundreds of volunteers, said fire brigade spokesman Yannis Artopios. Ten firefighting planes operate in the region, including two from France, two from Turkey and one from Croatia, in addition to eight helicopters.
There are big reinforcements from the European Union.
EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic tweeted early Sunday afternoon, “More than 450 firefighters and seven EU aircraft are working in Greece as the fires spread across the country.”
In the mountainous part of Rhodes, an active front for wildfires, firefighters are trying to prevent the fire from spreading to the nearby dense forests.
Southwest of the Kiotari resort, the main focus of Saturday’s evacuations, a trench was dug to prevent fire from crossing a creek and threatening the village of Gennadi.
It was still hot in the Mediterranean country on Sunday. Before midday, temperatures are already in the highs of 38°C (100°F). The wind was low but noticeably variable on Rhodes, as on other Greek islands.
Some of the evacuees, including tourists, are being housed in other hotels, gyms and a conference centre. A shipping company offered housing on one of its ships. Kotiadis, a travel agent, told The Associated Press that three ships are being used.
Authorities have designated an unprecedentedly large part of the mainland, the entire eastern part of central and southern Greece, as well as the islands of Evia and Rhodes as well as large swathes of the southwest, as Category 5, the highest fire risk as of Sunday. Another part of Greece is classified as Category 4, high risk.
Temperatures reached 43 degrees Celsius (110 Fahrenheit) in the capital, Athens, on Sunday afternoon and 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in the interior plains of central Greece. Meteorologists have warned that a relative respite from the heat on Monday, with forecasts of a high of 38C (100F), will be followed by another heat wave from Tuesday that will last until at least Friday.
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