SPYROS BAKALIS / AFP
People watch the fires near the village of Malona on the Greek island of Rhodes July 23, 2023.
GREECE – The nightmare continues in the paradise islands. In Greece, firefighters continued their fight against forest fires on Monday, July 24. For several days, the country has been hit by an extraordinary heat wave, combined with strong winds that have fueled the outbreak of several fires of unprecedented proportions.
“In the next few weeks we must be on constant alert,” said Greek Prime Minister Kyriákos Mitsotakis in a speech to parliament, in which he also said: “We are at war, we will rebuild what we lost, we will compensate the injured.”
Tens of thousands of vacationers from the island of Rhodes near the Turkish coast had to be evacuated. On the island of Corfu in southern Albania, which is also very touristy, a forest fire in the night from Sunday to Monday led to the “preventive evacuation of 2,466 people”, residents and tourists, said Yannis Artopios, a spokesman for the fire brigade.
A further intensification of the heat wave is expected on Wednesday
“We still have three difficult days ahead of us,” the Prime Minister recalled in his speech. The National Weather Agency (EMY) estimates that the current heatwave will continue to increase on Tuesday 25th July and especially on Wednesday 26th July when the temperature is likely to reach 44°C. On Wednesday afternoon, “Thunderstorms are expected across the center and west of the country before a 6 to 8 degree Celsius drop,” EMY added.
The current heatwave is one of the longest in Greece in decades, with temperatures exceeding 46ºC on Sunday. For Prime Minister Kyriákos Mitsotákis, the country is a victim of climate change: “The climate crisis is already here, it will manifest itself in major disasters all over the Mediterranean.”
“Although not uncommon in southern Europe, what is unusual about the Rhodes fires is their intensity and the speed at which they have spread,” confirms Douglas Kelley, a researcher at the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK.
The current events are impressive and unprecedented. The fire that ravaged Rhodes, in the southeastern Aegean, led to the evacuation of more than 32,000 tourists this Saturday, “the largest operation (of its kind) ever carried out in Greece,” according to authorities. Firefighters at the scene battled the blaze for seven straight days.
See also on The HuffPost:
You cannot view this content because:
- With your subscription you have rejected cookies related to third-party content. You can therefore not play our videos, which require third-party cookies to function.
- You are using an ad blocker. We advise you to disable it to be able to access our videos.
If neither of these two cases applies to you, contact us at [email protected].