Forest fires on Rhodes: you need to know this
– Forest fires have been raging for the sixth day in a row. An immediate improvement is not expected, because the wind will increase even further. Today it will be locally more than 40 degrees Celsius.
– 19,000 people were already evacuated. Sun hundred Belgians would be there on vacation. Travel organizer TUI evacuated there Saturday seventy and Sunweb Ninety. Corendon evacuated some 200 travelers. These were mainly Dutch, but also Belgians.
– TUI has decided “for safety reasons”. cancel all departures from today until Tuesday 25 July. However, returning to Belgium early is not an option for most travelers, says TUI. Because it is high season, there is not much space on the return flights. Sunweb also cancels all flights to the island until Monday. Corendon will keep all flights to Rhodes on the ground until Tuesday.
– Currently, the fire is raging fiercely around the seaside resort Kiotariin the village Apollona and around the reservoir of Gadoura.
– There is also a high risk of fire in Central Greece, the area around the capital Athens and the island of Evia.
It would be local today well above 40 degrees could be. These temperatures remind many Greeks of the heat wave of July 1987when it almost two weeks was scorching hot and almost 1,300 people to the heat succumbed. The deputy director of the Greek Institute of Meteorology, Thodoris Kolidas, has said, according to Greek media, that the heat wave of that year is difficult to compare with the heat of today. Then it was continuously very hot and now there are three waves.
10:24
Flemings testify: “People should draw their own plan”
“Where are we going to sleep tonight. No idea”, responded Jelle Van Hove, a Flemish tourist to Rhodes on Saturday at VTM NEWS. “Everything is full or they don’t respond,” he denounced. “People just have to draw their own plan,” says Anneke Vermeersch. Another Flemish tourist, Karen Verbruggen, described how she saw “the ashes falling on her children’s hair”. “The panic was great,” said the compatriot, who also criticized the lack of communication.
LOOK. Flemish tourist testifies: “We don’t know what will happen, can we go home?”
Belgians on the island are “furious”. “We do not receive any information from any travel organization, but the Belgian embassy does not respond either. Most of us had to leave our luggage behind because we were evacuated by sea,” one of the holidaymakers tells our editors. Read more about how our compatriots are currently experiencing the chaos here.
10:23
Hundreds of Belgians on Rhodes
At least seventy Belgians who are on holiday in Rhodes with the travel organization TUI have had to leave their hotels as a precaution, confirmed the Belgian spokesperson for TUI, Piet Demeyere, to VTM NEWS on Saturday. “At the moment there is no acute danger for the hotels, it is about one precautionThese days TUI flies daily to Rhodes from Brussels. On Sunday’s flight there are five travelers whose accommodation is planned in the region of the island affected by forest fires. They will be given the option to leave for another part of Rhodes, or to rebook their trip free of charge.
Travel organization Corendon says that about 200 of its travelers have been involved in the evacuations and have been taken to a safe place by the Greek government. It mainly concerns Dutch people, but there are also Belgians and Danes. “They will be given the choice of going to alternative accommodation or flying back home,” a spokeswoman said.
Through Sunweb then about ninety Belgians would have been evacuated. This was announced by the travel organization on Radio 1 this morning.