There is no end in sight to the heat wave in Greece. As the Meteorological Office announced, values of up to 45 degrees Celsius are expected in the south of the country on Sunday. In the central Greek city of Larisa, the thermometer showed 44 degrees early on Saturday afternoon. Two villages and several hotels had to be evacuated on the holiday island of Rhodes.
The smoke from a forest fire near the village of Laerma was too strong, as reported by state radio. “It is the most difficult fire we have to deal with,” said a spokesman for the Greek fire brigade.
Residents help tourists
According to the Coast Guard, 1,500 people were brought to safety from the beaches because escape routes were cut off. Most of them were tourists. Fishermen and private individuals also took people with their boats. The tourists are now to be accommodated in hotels and in a basketball hall. Hundreds of Rhodes residents volunteered to help the tourists, state television reported.
The forest fires that have been raging on Rhodes for three days got out of control in the afternoon. According to media reports, thousands of people have already been brought to safety. State radio reported in a special that 8,000 people had left the south of the island, which is popular with tourists, by land. The number could be even higher, it said.
A spokesman for the fire brigade had previously announced that 2,000 people had been brought to safety by boat from the coasts south of Lindos. How many people fled overland was not yet known from official sources on Saturday evening.
Force six winds blow in the Rhodes region. “The smoke is so heavy that you can hardly breathe. People are being taken to the small town of Gennadi, from where they are to be accommodated in other hotels,” Konstantinos Traraslias, deputy mayor of Rhodes, told the Athens news channel Skai.
Fire surprises fire brigade
As the government in Athens announced in the evening, eight people with respiratory problems were taken to the hospital. The fire, which has been raging on the mountains of Rhodes for four days, turned towards the coast due to the change in wind direction and surprised the fire brigade, a spokesman said.
In northern Greece, too, there were values around 40 degrees in many places. Even most of the Aegean islands have temperatures above 38 degrees. One of the leading Greek meteorologists, Konstantinos Lagouvardos, estimated on state television that “if things continue like this”, this heat wave could become the longest since measurements have been taken in Greece. In July 1987, a similar heat wave in Greece killed an estimated 1,300 people.
The fire brigade again warned of the great danger of forest fires. “We have even more difficult times ahead of us,” said a spokesman for state television. The fires in the Athens area and on the Peloponnese peninsula have been brought under control. But they flare up again and again because everything has dried up, they said.
International support
Meanwhile, hundreds of firefighters from Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Slovakia and Malta have arrived in Greece to reinforce the fire brigade and are battling the flames. France, Italy, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and Jordan are taking part in the extinguishing work with firefighting planes and helicopters, the Greek civil defense announced.
According to the meteorologists, the heat wave will continue with small fluctuations in the coming week. A new high is expected on Wednesday with temperatures around 46 degrees in southern Greece.
The Italian meteorologists are also expecting a new heat wave at the beginning of next week. Then between Sardinia and Sicily peak temperatures of 47 to 48 degrees are possible, wrote the weather service Ilmeteo.it. The weather service of the Italian Air Force registered 40 degrees from Palermo, the capital of Sicily, early Saturday afternoon. In Rome it was 37 degrees. 41.8 degrees had already been measured there last Tuesday.
