Wildfires are raging in different parts of Greece. Evacuations have now also been started from the island of Corfu and Euboea.
Wildfires are raging all over Greece. The country’s authorities reported 64 new wildfires during Sunday. There are already more than 80 wildfires in total.
Yesterday, Sunday, the wildfire in Ródos was already 92 square kilometers in size, according to the European Commission Copernicus program emergencies management service. The area corresponds to almost half of Helsinki’s land area, which is 214 square kilometers.
Evacuations were also announced on Sunday evening in the tourist island of Corfu. 2,500 people have been evacuated from there. Today, Monday, evacuations have also started on Greece’s second largest island, Euboea.
The worst wildfires have hit Rhodes, which is the country’s fourth largest island. The largest evacuation in the history of Greece is underway there – more than 19,000 people have had to be evacuated on the island. Most of them are tourists.
Ródos is slightly smaller than Åland and has more than 100,000 people. Last year, about 2.5 million tourists visited the island.
The fires are concentrated in the central parts of the island. Most of the island is without electricity because the power plant has been shut down to close for security reasons, says The Guardian. Moderate to strong northwesterly winds have made extinguishing operations difficult, especially in the southern part of the Aegean Sea around Rhodes.
Greek minister responsible for tourism Olga Kefalogianni according to the fires are not however, so extensive as has been implied in some media. According to him, wildfires affect about 10 to 20 percent of the island’s surface area.
— This is indeed the biggest evacuation that Greece has ever done, and it happened in just a few hours. However, everyone is safe, Kefalogianni told the BBC.
According to him, it is still worth traveling to Corfu and Rhodes.
On Sunday, temperatures rose to more than 40 degrees in many places in Rhodes. The highest temperature measured in Greece reached over 46 degrees Celsius in the town of Gýtheio in southern Greece.
Tourism is vital for Greece. Up to a quarter of the country’s gross domestic product comes from tourism. About one in five Greeks works in the industry. The fires raging on the islands are a significant threat to Greece.
According to the Greek Meteorological Institute, temperatures are expected to drop on Thursday.