Tourists flown home as wildfires rage on Greek islands

Tour operators flew home nearly 1,500 holidaymakers at the start of a mass evacuation from wildfires raging on the Greek island of Rhodes on Monday and officials said the threat of further fires was high in almost every region of the country.

Fires burning since Wednesday on Rhodes forced the evacuation of 19,000 people over the weekend as an inferno reached coastal resorts on the island’s southeast. A wildfire also forced evacuations from the island of Corfu.

Rhodes and Corfu are among Greece’s top destinations for tourists mainly from Britain and Germany.

“For the next few weeks we must be on constant alert. We are at war, we will rebuild what we lost, we will compensate those who were hurt,” Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament.

“The climate crisis is already here, it will manifest itself everywhere in the Mediterranean with greater disasters.”

After leaving hotels and resorts, tourists spent the night on Rhodes airport floor, waiting for repatriation flights, the first of which came overnight.

From Sunday until 6 a.m. on Monday, 1,489 tourists were flown back, mainly to Britain, Germany and Italy, Greek government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said, describing the evacuation as the largest undertaken in the country.

That included holiday company TUI’s UK and Ireland arm TUI1n.DE taking three plane loads of passengers back to Britain overnight.

British Foreign Office Minister Andrew Mitchell estimated that up to 10,000 Britons were on the island.

Austrian tourist Mario Wiese said he had spent two days at Rhodes airport and had had to sort out his own return flight to Germany on Monday evening.

“We have been lying here for two days. There are no blankets, nothing. There are children lying here who need milk,” he said. “I had to organise everything myself because no one looks after us here. I don’t understand it.”

REPATRIATION FLIGHTS

Britain’s easyJet said it was operating two flights on Monday from Rhodes to London’s Gatwick airport and another on Tuesday, in addition to the nine flights already operating between the island and Gatwick.

Jet2 said it was operating three extra flights on Monday to bring back around 600 people. Air France was also flying out of Rhodes with increased capacity.

Ryanair said its flights to and from Rhodes were operating as normal and it was monitoring the situation on Monday.

Chief Executive Michael O’Leary said Ryanair had not seen passengers seeking to cancel flights to Rhodes over the weekend, given fires were more in the south of the island and the airport and most resorts in the north.

On Corfu, nearly 2,500 people were offered shelter, including in stadiums, although many returned to their hotels on Monday.

On Rhodes, some holidaymakers said they walked for miles in scorching heat to reach safety. The fires left blackened trees, dead animals and burnt-out cars.

Greece is often hit by wildfires during the summer months but climate change has led to more extreme heatwaves across southern Europe, raising concerns that tourists will stay away.

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

Civil Protection said practically every region of Greece was facing the threat of wildfires on Monday ranging from high, very high to state of alert.

Temperatures over the past week have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in many parts of the country and were forecast to persist in the coming days.

Emergency services were also dealing with fires on the island of Evia, east of Athens, and Aigio, southwest of Athens.