Greece at War: More evacuations As Wildfires Continue

By Staff, Agencies

Thousands of people have been evacuated from the Greek islands of Rhodes and Corfu as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared that the Mediterranean nation was at war with wildfires raging across the country.

On the resort island of Rhodes, one of Greece’s leading holiday destinations, the flames remained out of control for a seventh day, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes and hotels, according to a fire brigade spokesperson.

The latest evacuations were ordered after 19,000 people, mostly tourists, were moved in buses and boats over the weekend out of the path of the fire that reached several coastal areas from nearby mountains.

It was the country’s biggest evacuation effort in recent years.

On the western Ionian tourist island of Corfu, about 2,400 visitors and locals were also relocated as a precautionary measure from Sunday into Monday. Evacuations were reported on the island of Evia and in a mountainous area in the southern Peloponnese region.

“For the next few weeks, we must be on constant alert. We are at war,” the Greek prime minister told parliament. “We will rebuild what we lost, we will compensate those who were hurt… The climate crisis is already here. It will manifest itself everywhere in the Mediterranean with greater disasters,” he said.

He warned that the nation faced “another three difficult days ahead” before high temperatures are forecast to ease.

Help continued to arrive from the European Union and elsewhere, with firefighting planes from neighboring Turkey joining the effort on Rhodes, where 10 water-dropping planes and 10 helicopters buzzed over flames up to 5 meters [16 feet] tall despite low visibility.