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Officials on the Greek island of Rhodes evacuated thousands of locals and tourists from villages in the southeast of the Aegean island, where wildfires were raging out of control for a fifth day.
High winds and a nine-kilometer (six-mile) fire front running from the center of the island to its eastern beaches were creating extreme conditions, Vassilis Varthakogiannis told Skai TV.
“This is not a fire that will be over tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” Varthakoyannis added. “It’ll be troubling us for days.”
Another 1,200 people were expected to be evacuated from the villages of Pefki, Lindos and Kalathos, he added.
“We had set up firebreaks around the village of Laerma last night,” Konstantinos Taraslias, a deputy mayor of Rhodes, told Open TV.
“But a 180-degree change of the winds this morning helped the fire grow much bigger across many kilometers … reaching a tourist area.”
In Athens, the foreign ministry said it had activated its crisis management unit to facilitate the evacuation of foreign citizens in Greece due to the ongoing forest fires.
An ‘unprecedented situation’
Local officials on Rhodes said on Saturday they had moved 30,000 people threatened by wildfires to safety — including 2,000 who had to be ferried off beaches.
