He lives. Greek police talk about the “largest evacuation in Greek history” due to forest fires in Rhodes | HLN’s Instagram

Rhodes wildfires: you need to know this

– A forest fire broke out Sixth day in a row. An immediate improvement is not expected, because the winds will increase even more. Today it will be locally more than 40 degrees Celsius.

– 19,000 people are ready evacuation. sun a hundred The Belgians will be there on vacation. travel organizer TUI Delayed there Saturday seventy and Sunweb ninety. also with Corendon They are citizens on holiday in Rhodes, but it is unclear exactly how many people are involved.

– TUI decided “for safety reasons”. All flights departing from today until Tuesday 25 July are cancelled. Sunweb also canceled all flights to the island through Monday. Corendon will keep all flights to Rhodes grounded until Tuesday.

– At the moment, fires are burning fiercely around the seaside resort KyotariIn the village Apollona And about a tank Kaddoura.

– There is also a high risk of fire in central Greece, the area around the capital, Athens, and the island of Evia.

will be local Today it is well above 40 degrees It could be. These temperatures remind many of the Greeks b July 1987 heat wavewhen cad It was two very hot weeks and it was about 1,300 people to heat give up. The Deputy Director of the Hellenic Institute of Meteorology, Theodoris Kollidas, said, according to Greek media, that it is difficult to compare the heat wave that year with the heat prevailing today. Then it was continuously hot and now there are three waves.

“Where are we going to sleep tonight. No idea,” Flemish tourist Jill Van Hove replied to Rhodes Saturday on VTM NEWS. He denounced, “Everything is full or they don’t respond.” “People just have to make their own plan,” says Anneke Vermeersch. Another Flemish tourist, Karen Verbruggen, described how she saw “ash falling on her children’s hair”. “The panic was great,” said the citizen, who also criticized the lack of communication.

look. The Flemish tourist testifies: “We don’t know what will happen, can we go home?”

The Belgians on the island are “angry”. We do not receive any information from any travel organisation, but the Belgian Embassy does not reply either. Most of us had to leave our luggage behind because we were being evacuated by sea,” one vacationer told our editors. Read more about how our fellow citizens are currently in the chaos here.

No fewer than seventy Belgians are holidaying in Rhodes with the travel organisation TUI They had to leave their hotels as a precaution, TUI’s Belgian spokesperson, Piet Demeyere, confirmed to VTM NEWS on Saturday. “At the moment, there is not much risk for hotels, it is about one precautionaryThese days, TUI flies daily to Rhodes from Brussels. On Sunday’s trip, five travelers are scheduled to stay in the bushfire-affected area of ​​the island. They will be given the option to leave for another part of Rhodes, or to rebook their flight for free.

Travel organization Corendon It says about 200 of its passengers have participated in the evacuations and have been taken to safety by the Greek government. It is mainly about the Dutch people, but there are also Belgians and Danes. “They will be given the choice of going to alternative accommodation or returning home,” a spokeswoman said.

during Sunweb Then about ninety Belgians were evacuated. This was announced by the travel organization on Radio 1 this morning.

Firefighters have been battling wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes for five days. While other forest fires in Greece are currently under control, the fire continues to spread in Rhodes. diverse Hotels have been evacuated. Thousands of tourists had to be brought to safety by coast guard buses and boats. Fires in Rhodes It originated in the middle of a wooded, mountainous and sparsely populated islandBut calls to evacuate have now also reached the southwest coast.

the places Kyotari, Lardus and Lindosin the southeast of the island, they became More dangerous than fire. A fire department spokesman said the fire was difficult to put out. There are also winds in the region around Rhodes Strong wind with wind strength six. “The smoke is so thick that you can hardly breathe. People are being transported to Gennadi, where they are being transported to other hotels,” Rhodes deputy mayor Konstantinos Traraslias told Sky news channel in Athens.