Greece fires 2023 LIVE: Up to 10,000 Britons remain on Rhodes as firefighters battle to extinguish blaze caused by extreme heatwave

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On Sunday, Corfu became the second Greek island to become engulfed in flames, sparking mass panic and domestic evacuations.

But the deputy mayor of the island has said that firefighters should have ‘finished’ with the blazes by the end of today.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s PM programme, Theofanis Skembris said that while fires are still burning in three areas, they are under control.

‘It’s no problem for anyone who like to come to Corfu to come,’ he added.

Among the Britons returning from Greece was Mark Payton who had been on holiday with his wife and children aged 16 and 12. Mr Payton, from St George, Bristol, had planned the trip to Pefkos in Rhodes to celebrate his son completing his GCSEs.

‘We flew out Friday afternoon and landed midnight,’ he said, adding that the disruption had started on Saturday.

‘We had a lovely day, then we got a text from the Government to say we needed to evacuate.’

He said they were told to go to the local beach before moving to a nearby car park, adding: ‘Eventually we got up to Rhodes by coach at about 4am and they dropped us off at a school and we had chairs to see if we could sleep,’ he said.

‘I was really amazed by the locals who brought us food and fresh water, but we still had no contact from the holiday company at all. The reps did eventually turn up but all they said was they were waiting for updates.

‘We didn’t know what to do, whether we should be coming home or whether it was safe to stay.

‘Eventually the UK Government officials came out and they were great, and they gave us the advice to try and get ourselves home as they were stopping the flights coming out to Rhodes.’ 

Terrified British families who escaped fire-ravaged Rhodes describe scenes of panic and chaos during evacuation

Terrified British families who have escaped fire-ravaged Rhodes have described the scenes of panic and chaos during their desperate evacuations.

The first holidaymakers who have arrived back at London Gatwick have revealed how they endured a gruelling few days without cold water or air conditioning as the Greek island became scorched by vicious flames.

One British couple described how they had to abruptly leave a wedding because of a power cut, while Ari, an Iraqi national, said he and his partner had to battle for three days at their hotel with no air conditioning or cold drinks due to no electricity.

The 41-year-old, who works in Tesco, said: ‘We had no electricity in our hotel for three days; no cold drinks and no air-conditioning in that heat… for three days it was like that.

‘We had to use our phone lights to go down the corridor at night. We saw lots of smoke, but we didn’t see the fires.’

READ MORE: 

The UK ambassador to Greece Matthew Lodge expressed his gratitude to the people of Rhodes for the way the help they have offered to British tourists on the island in recent days.

Writing in Greek on Twitter, he said: ‘The fires in Rhodes and the rest of Greece shock us. 

‘We have great admiration for all those fighting to extinguish them. 

‘I would like to express our sincere gratitude to the people of Rhodes who have embraced the tourists who are on the island.’

The two largest wildfires on Rhodes have been pinpointed near the villages of Eleousa and Laerma, which are in the centre of the island.

A map shows the worst-affected areas and where people have been forced to evacuate from.

Fires that started yesterday on the island of Corfu are still ongoing, according to the local Fire Department.

Wildfires in the area of Loutses have continued into this afternoon and spread to the areas of Santa, Porta, Megoula, Sinies, Ano Perithia, Viglatouri, and Ai Giorgi towards Kassiopi, local paper Enimerosi reports.

Here, a map shows areas on the island which have been affected by the blazes.

The temperature gauge reads 40 degrees Celsius and it’s hot as hell on a mountain side in Rhodes.

There isn’t a cloud in the sky, just the smell of old fires and a wisp of wood smoke.

I am surrounded by a forest of charred bushes and trees.

Suddenly a gust of hot wind inspires the tinder dry undergrowth to burst into flame.

As a Chinook helicopter, laden with a cargo of seawater to douse the blaze, flies over head, the vicious wildfires that have been ravaging this holiday island, come back to life.

Read more here.

All Thomas Cook customers who were in evacuation centres on Rhodes have now left, either returning home or going to stay in another hotel, the travel firm said this afternoon.

Around 50 customers were evacuated from their hotels over the weekend due to the wildfires in parts of the island, it said.

‘We are in touch with customers who arrived on the island yesterday to areas unaffected by the fire and they are enjoying their holiday,’ Thomas Cook added.

The company also said it is extending its full-refund policy to those who have trips booked up to and including this Wednesday, who no longer want to travel to the island.

Travel company TUI has announced it is stopping all flights to Rhodes until July 28.

The tour operator is also cancelling all fights for customers who are set to stay in hotel affected by the wildfires up to July 30. 

TUI added in a statement: ‘All customers due to travel on these flights will receive full refunds.

‘Passengers due to travel to areas not affected by fires on Saturday 29th and Sunday 30th July will be offered a fee free amend to another holiday or the option to cancel for a full refund.

‘We are still operating empty outbound flights to bring those customers currently on holiday elsewhere in Rhodes home as planned and working to get those in affected areas as soon as possible.

‘The safety and well-being of our customers and teams remains our top priority.’

A father of two from Kent today revealed how he is £10,000 out of pocket after his family holiday to Greece was ruined by wildfires as thousands of Britons being evacuated also face missing out on any compensation.

Chris Elworthy, 42, a farmer from Faversham, was due to fly with easyJet to Rhodes with his wife Emma, 43, and two children, Thomas, 13, and Charlotte, 11, on Saturday, for a holiday at a private villa in Pefkos – before both bookings were cancelled. 

The former Royal Engineers officer said easyJet was ‘not helping at all’ with a voucher or another flight and the villa is ‘refusing’ to provide a refund. ‘We are now £10,000 out of pocket; easyJet is not helping at all with a flight, despite having promised on Twitter that they would provide a voucher or another flight… 24 hours later they have done nothing,’ he told the PA news agency.

‘The villa is refusing to refund us, and the holiday insurance is saying that we’re not covered because we didn’t have the additional natural disaster cover on top of the ordinary cover.’ 

Read more here.

Downing Street has defended its decision not to discourage people from going to Rhodes, despite wildfires continuing to rage on the island and Brits being brought out on evacuation flights.

The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said: ‘Our advice is focused on the safety of British nationals and enabling people to make an informed decision about the situation on the ground.

‘The current situation is impacting on a limited area in Rhodes and whilst it’s right to keep it under review and it’s possible that the advice may change we do not want to act out of proportion to the situation on the ground.’

Sisters Adele, 24, Elise, 21, and Beatrice White, 17, from Surrey, flew home from Corfu to Gatwick after witnessing wildfires on the holiday island.

Adele said: ‘At half 10 we got a notification that said “please evacuate and head to the beach”.

‘We were like ‘oh it should be fine, it should be fine’ but the sky behind the villa was getting more and more bright orange.’

She added: ‘I felt really sad for local people. Right when we were driving out, the mountain was honestly in flames and people are just having their lives burned down. We’ve got the easy way out.’

Beatrice told reporters: ‘You could see the hillside started to catch fire.’

Elise said: ‘You could taste it when you were walking around. It tasted smoky.’

Satellite images have shown the extent of the wildfire devastation on the Greek island of Rhodes.

Pictures taken before the weekend show how far the fires have spread and how scarred the island has become in a short period of time.

Europe is battling the effects of scorching weather, with June having been the hottest month on record in the 174-year history of temperature monitoring.

Last year, heat waves resulted in over 61,600 heat-related fatalities across 35 European countries and triggered devastating wildfires. 

This year, temperatures could exceed Europe’s current record of 48.8 Celsius, recorded in Sicily in August 2021.

In Greece, strong winds have helped to fan flames while scorching weather has created the perfect, dry conditions for fires to spread.

TUI says it has deployed six additional planes to fly home German and British holidaymakers stuck on Rhodes.

Another TUI flight will bring Danish tourists back to Billund, Europe’s largest travel operator said in a statement.

‘Further deployments have already been implemented and are planned, we are informing our guests on site and organising all necessary steps,’ said Thomas Ellerbeck, a member of TUI’s executive committee.

The Liberal Democrats have called for the UK government to add Rhodes to the travel ‘red list’ and advise Brits against all but essential travel to the island.

Doing so could help families get compensation to the Greek island which have been cancelled or ruined by the wildfires.

The party’s foreign affairs spokesperson said in a statement this afternoon: ‘Thanks to Conservative ministers’ inaction, many families are unable to make a claim against their insurance – leaving them paying the penalty for deciding not to fly out to the island.’ 

A hero British tourist described apocalyptic scenes ‘like the end of the world’ after he spent eight hours driving across Rhodes to rescue stranded families in a rental car.

Jonathan Lewis, of Attleborough, Norfolk, was on a family holiday on the Greek island as the flames were blown towards the coast, where he was staying.

The transport worker bravely ferried people to safety on Saturday after deciding to take action when smoke began pouring onto the resort from behind a mountain.

Read more here.

Katie Piercefield-Holmes and her family, from Newmarket in Suffolk, reportedly decided to lock themselves in the Princess Andriana hotel in Kiotari, Rhodes.

Areas of the nearby village have been badly affected by wildfires, and the mother-of-two described her fear as she spoke to BBC News.

Katie, whose children are aged 11 and seven, said: ‘It’s been extremely frightening. I’ve been trying to hold it together for the children.

‘There was a period yesterday when a tree caught fire across the road and the hill behind the hotel was completely ablaze.

‘There were hundreds of people walking down to the beach from other hotels, and my youngest started crying and saying he didn’t want to die, and you’re trying as a parent to hold everything together to keep them as calm as possible.

She added that things seem to have improved since yesterday, for the time being.

‘Luckily at the moment it feels fairly safe where we are, we have seen people coming back to the hotel to collect luggage.

‘We are staying where we are at the moment on the advice of our tour operator and hotel owners.

‘But with the fires in the village next to us, it’s quite worrying, we are seeing smoke again, ash falling and we are holding tight in our hotel room.’

Eight water-dropping planes and 10 helicopters have been working to extinguish flames up to five meters (16 feet) tall in Rhodes, despite low visibility.

Rhodes authorities said no serious injuries were reported in evacuations on the island.

However, hospitals and health volunteers have been providing first aid to tourists and residents, mostly for the effects of heat and dehydration.

British travel company Jet2 said it would operate four extra flights on Monday night to bring more of its customers in Rhodes back to the UK.

Jet2 said repatriation flights to Manchester, Leeds Bradford and Birmingham would bring home about 800 people who had been forced to evacuate hotels, adding extra services on top of the 50 Rhodes to UK services it already has scheduled this week.

The company said it was also flying out more staff to help assist customers who had to flee their resorts and are now camped out in evacuation centres or waiting at the airport.

‘We have a significantly expanded presence in Rhodes, with a huge team of experienced colleagues providing all the support we can for our customers,’ Jet2 said in a statement.

Professor Stefan Doerr, director of the Centre for Wildfire Research at Swansea University, said Crete and other popular holiday destinations are also at risk of wildfires this summer.

The scientist told Sky News this is because Mediterranean holiday hotspots have ‘ample flammable grass, shrub and conifer forest vegetation’.

These act as perfect fuel for fires which can spread quickly in strong winds and high temperatures, which have dried out the landscape amid a severe heatwave.

Kelly Squirrell and her family were staying at a hotel in Kiotari, close to one of the biggest fires.

They were evacuated when ash started falling into the pool and they then ‘saw the flames’ approaching. They had to walk for six miles to safety in near 40C heat.

She has blasted easyJet, accusing them of going missing, and said: ‘I am absolutely disgusted, I worked in travel myself. No support whatsoever. I want an explanation. Where are they?’

She said that easyJet is still operating flights where passengers are being ‘ushered into rescue buses as soon as they arrived’.

Read more here.

CLICK HERE to see an interactive map of Europe’s wildfires.

The Foreign Office said it has sent five of its staff and four British Red Cross responders to Rhodes to help support British nationals.

A spokesman said: ‘They will be based at Rhodes International Airport to assist with travel documents and liaise with Greek authorities and travel operators on the ground.

‘British nationals in Rhodes should contact their travel operator in the first instance for any queries regarding the rescheduling of flights and continue to check our updated gov.uk travel advice for information.’

Tourists planning trips to the Mediterranean should see the Greek wildfires as a ‘big, big warning’, with climate change set to fuel more severe blazes in future, one of the UK’s leading climate scientists has said.

Sir David King, former UK chief scientific adviser and chairman of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, said many people will die from heat stress because of the relentless heatwaves over southern Europe, where millions of Britons travel on holiday each year.

Speaking from another Greek island, Sir David warned tourists to take care in the heat.

He made clear that he has ‘no doubt’ that the extreme temperatures are due to melting ice in the Arctic caused by greenhouse gases emitted by people heating the Earth’s atmosphere.

He said: ‘If you are in one of these very warm areas and you haven’t got air conditioning indoors you could suffer terribly – many people will die from heat stress.

‘You must have moving air – it makes an enormous difference. If there’s a large fan, preferentially a roof fan, that is moving the air in the room… because moving the air helps to remove the perspiration from your body and keeps you cooler.

‘I wouldn’t be too dogmatic about advice but, certainly, there’s a big, big warning this summer. To anyone planning to go overseas for the summer, “Be very careful” would be my advice.’

Many wildfires around the world are started by people, whether on purpose or by accident, but rising temperatures and drier conditions exacerbated by climate change mean that, once ignited, fires can spread with lethal speed and ferocity.

Sir David said: ‘There’s no coincidence at all that climate change has driven these higher temperatures, and the higher temperatures are causing the fires that are spreading.

‘The only way to tackle this is deep and rapid emissions reductions. In terms of greenhouse gases, we have virtually doubled the amount of greenhouse gases compared to the pre-industrial level.’

‘We are in the seventh day of the fire and it hasn’t been controlled,’ Rhodes Deputy Mayor Konstantinos Taraslias told state broadcaster ERT.

‘This is really stressful for us, because it can affect other areas that are safe and operate as normal.

‘The tourists are not able to know where the wildfires are in Rhodes. Even the Greeks can’t really understand where the wildfires are located in the island’. 

The German government is to convene a crisis meeting on Monday to discuss the impact of wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes on German holidaymakers, according to a foreign ministry spokesperson.

Speaking during a regular news conference in Berlin, the spokesperson said the crisis meeting at 11.00 GMT will allow the German government to ‘coordinate with our colleagues on the ground and then decide on possible further measures’.

An interior ministry spokesperson said that German federal police and fire fighters were already assisting Greek authorities in bringing affected people back to the mainland.

Thousands marched for 12 hours in the blazing sun and 38 degrees Celsius to escape the flames billowing down the mountainside in Rhodes, bearing down on homes, hotels and resorts.

Others fought for space on buses and waded neck-high into the Mediterranean Sea to be rescued by small boats operated by locals in scenes likened to Dunkirk.

Many have since spent nights on the airport floor, waiting for repatriation flights, with more evacuations ordered on Monday morning.

Meanwhile, Greek firefighters continue to struggle to contain more than 80 wildfires across the country – 64 of which started on Sunday, the hottest day of the year.

Read more here.

The Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has said the country is ‘at war’ with raging wildfires.

He added that there are ‘another three difficult days ahead’ as infernos continue to grip parts of the country.

The country is often hit by wildfires during the summer months but climate change has led to more extreme heatwaves across southern Europe.

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

As well as fires on the popular tourist islands of Rhodes and Corfu, emergency services have also been dealing with fires on the island of Evia, east of Athens, and Aigio, southwest of Athens.

Foreign Office Minister Andrew Mitchell has advised Brits in Rhodes to ‘stick very close to your tour company, they know best what you should do’.

‘Stick to the tour operator and the local Greek services who will give the best possible advice,’ he said on BBC Breakfast this morning.

Just under 2,500 tourists were confirmed to have been evacuated from Corfu last night, a spokesman for its fire department said this morning.

Yannis Artopios said wildfires have been raging in the north of the island and that 2,466 people were evacuated between Sunday and Monday.

No hotels or houses are believed to have suffered destruction so far, it was said.

Foreign Office Minister Andrew Mitchell told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme that the situation on Rhodes is ‘undoubtedly a wake-up call’ in the climate crisis.

‘We had, just a couple of weeks ago, the hottest day, on Monday, that the world has ever experienced. Those temperatures were then exceeded on the Wednesday for a second weekly record.

‘And then, on Thursday, the third record in one week. The highest temperatures the planet has ever seen. Climate change is real. It is now.

‘And it is essential that the world combats it, and Britain is playing a leading role in doing that.’

Buses have been put on by tour companies to get people away from wildfires in Rhodes.

Holidaymakers have reported fights breaking as families have scrambled to get onto the packed coaches, bound for safer parts of the island like its airport in the north.

EasyJet said it will be operating two rescue flights from Rhodes to the UK today, with a total of 421 seats today.

The airline will also be running a third on Wednesday, on top of its nine scheduled flights.

The two repatriation flights are expected to take off sometime this afternoon, the BBC reports.

Mother-of-six Jess Bailey arrived with her husband and two children on Saturday night to find hundreds of people in classrooms and stadiums.

Speaking on Sunday, she said: ‘Its quite unbelievable really. We arrived last night from Bristol, and were evacuated straight to an evacuation centre.

‘There were flights coming in really quite late at night from all over the place and people couldn’t go to their hotels.

‘It was chaos at Rhodes airport last night. Nobody seemed to know what was going on at all. There were hundreds and hundreds of people everywhere. This morning there is nobody from Tui here. Nobody knows what is going on and it is scorchingly hot.’

Jet2 has said three repatriation flights to return hundreds of holidaymakers from Rhodes are planned on Monday evening.

The holiday firm said a flight, carrying 95 people, landed at Leeds Bradford late on Sunday evening.

In addition to over 50 scheduled flights, one flight will depart for Manchester, another for Leeds Bradford and a third for Birmingham later on Monday.

A spokesperson said: ‘We understand how difficult this experience has been for many, and our entire focus is on looking after our customers. We have a significantly expanded presence in Rhodes, with a huge team of experienced colleagues providing all the support we can for our customers, whether that is in affected areas or at Rhodes Airport.

‘We have also put on three repatriation flights to bring our customers home, which is on top of our scheduled programme of flights that will continue to operate from Rhodes to the UK this week. We are continuing to make decisions in the best interests of our customers, and we are keeping everything under constant review.’

A British couple have flown to wildfire-ravaged Rhodes for their wedding – despite others describing a ‘living nightmare’ as families are evacuated back to the UK.

Bride-to-be Holly Butler and her future husband Dominic Hustler, from Wokingham, Berkshire, arrived at the airport on the Greek island with their families last night.

The couple are fulfilling their dream of marrying on the island, which is where they became engaged. Although their TUI holiday was initially cancelled because of the wildfires, they booked separate flights so they could marry this Wednesday.

But others have told of being forced to sleep in schools, airports and sports centres on Rhodes, while one tourist arrived to hear the hotel she booked had burned down.

Read more here.

Chariton Koutscouris, the region’s deputy mayor of tourism and construction, blamed blazes on the island on a ‘group of people’. 

‘They get pleasure out of this with the pain of the other people,’ he said, speaking to the BBC. 

He also revealed that officials were warned on Friday by the fire department that someone who started fires last week would do so again.

‘He was right,’ Koutscouris said. 

Evacuations have been taking place on a third Greek island affected by wildfires, according to reports.

Some 77 firefighters and 25 water trucks are battling scattered outbreaks in Evia, east of Athens, said Greece’s state agency ANA-MPA, citing the fire department.

Central Greece Vice Governor Giorgos Kelaiditis, at Platanistos, told Greek news agency ANA-MPA last night that the situation is difficult.

‘The fire may be two kilometers away, but the wind is strong, the growth is low, the smoke thick and the air is hard to breathe,’ he said.

The area was previously ravaged by devastating wildfires back in the summer of 2021.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak urged holidaymakers hit by wildfiresacross Greece to remain in touch with tour operators.

Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to the West Midlands, the PM said: ‘My paramount priority is the safety of British nationals, that’s why the Deputy Prime Minister chaired a Cobra meeting yesterday, he’s been monitoring the situation closely.

‘The most important thing is people remain in touch with their tour operators, there are lots of flights going back and forth to be able to bring people home, and if people are in touch with their tour operators they will get the information that they need.’

Tourists who had planned to visit Rhodes could face trouble in getting compensation – as the Foreign Office still has not advised people not to travel.

Here, MailOnline looks at the key questions for those planning a trip – or trying to get back.

Laura and Marc Hall are celebrating their wedding anniversary while on holiday on the island and are due to fly back to the UK on Friday.

Mrs Hall told BBC Breakfast: ‘It’s been a nightmare, on Saturday night we were just having a drink and we knew that other places had been evacuated but we were just told to stand by.

‘There was ash falling in our drinks and we could just see a blaze in the distance and a load of smoke, we were told not to do anything and then all of a sudden we had alarms going off on our phone and the waiter was saying standby, shouting ‘mayday, mayday’.

‘So it was just a mad panic, we all started packing, we were just told to wait and we might have to evacuate, so we just stayed in our rooms and at 3am we get a call, we’ve got to go.’

Read more here.

Tour operator TUI put on three dedicated flights overnight to get Brits home from fire-ravaged Rhodes.

The company said in a statement: ‘Our teams in Rhodes have been working tirelessly to support customers impacted by the wildfires in south-eastern parts of the island, with over 300 reps, drivers and service colleagues doing their utmost to help where the can, alongside the amazing local community and emergency services.

‘We’re now working hard to get everybody home safely with our first passengers returning to the UK on three dedicated flights overnight and plans in place to get everyone affected back as soon as possible.

‘We appreciate how distressing and difficult it’s been for those who have been evacuated and ask that they continue to follow the advice of the local authorities and keep in touch with the TUI reps who are present in all evacuation centres. Our teams will be contacting customers with any updates as soon as they can.

‘We have cancelled all outbound flights to Rhodes up to and including Tuesday, and passengers due to travel on these flights will receive full refunds.’

Fire crews were struggling to contain 82 wildfires across Greece overnight, 64 of which started yesterday.

The area worst-hit by the blazes has been Rhodes, where 19,000 people have been evacuated.

Greek authorities said on Sunday that the fires have sparked the biggest evacuation in the country’s history. 

Maps show where the fires have been spreading on the Greek islands.

The evacuation of thousands of Britons from wildfire-ravaged Rhodes has started today with 14 mercy mission rescue flights scheduled to arrive back in the UK by this evening as the crisis caused by Europe’s 40C-plus Cerberus heatwave spread to Corfu.

Holidaymakers have described a ‘living nightmare’ of being woken by air raid sirens and being forced to run into the sea as fires swept through forests and hills above their hotels.

Read more here.

Up to 10,000 Britons are estimated to be on fire-ravaged Rhodes, with repatriation flights to rescue holidaymakers landing back in the UK.

It comes as travel operator Tui confirmed holidaymakers returned to the UK on ‘three dedicated flights’ overnight, with plans to bring more back ‘as soon as possible’ in place.

Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said it is ‘peak holiday season’, with between 7,000 and 10,000 Britons estimated to be on the island.

He told Times Radio: ‘There were only 10 free beds on the whole island when I asked yesterday. But we think that something like 1,000 beds may well come back on stream today as others don’t now come and therefore more beds are available.’

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