A Dublin woman Janet Karamanos, who has been living on the Greek island of Rhodes for 20 years has spoken about the concerns of residents as fires have spread leading to the evacuation of 20,000 people.
People were being evacuated by buses and boats that would normally be used for tourism facilities, she told RTÉ radio’s Morning Ireland.
Ms Karamanos said that one of her concerns was about smoke inhalation and the fact that winds were changing direction which made containing the fires very difficult.
People who would normally work in hotels and bars were instead volunteering to fight fires and others had returned to their home towns and villages to help evacuate their families, this meant hospitality businesses did not have staff and could not open, she explained.
“The heat is chronic. It’s just boiling all the time.” Electricity and water have been shut off for up to six hours at a time which means there is no air conditioning.
“This is the hottest summer I have known, and I’ve been here 20 years," she said.
A heat wave warning two weeks ago had indicated temperatures would rise above 40 degrees, but Ms Karamanos said it had been 47 degrees in direct sunlight.
As wildfires burned across Greece on Monday, forcing people to be evacuated from a beach on the island of Corfu, tourists crowded an airport on Rhodes after thousands fled hotels and resorts at the weekend.
Rhodes and Corfu are among Greece's top destinations for tourists.
"We are in the seventh day of the fire, and it hasn't been controlled," Rhodes Deputy Mayor Konstantinos Taraslias told state broadcaster ERT.
Tourists spent the night on the airport floor, waiting for repatriation flights.
"It was quite a bit of a struggle on the beach with the smoke," said John Hope, a tourist from Manchester, England.
Tour operators Jet2, TUI and Corendon cancelled flights leaving for Rhodes. Britain's easyJet EZJ.L said on Sunday it was operating two repatriation flights on Monday from Rhodes to London's Gatwick airport in addition to the nine flights already operating between the island and Gatwick.
The airline said it will add another repatriation flight on Tuesday.
Ryanair said on Sunday its flights to and from Rhodes were operating as normal. Its chief financial officer Neil Sorahan said the airline was monitoring the situation on Monday.
"We have a lot of customers there who want to get home. We're not going to leave them behind so we'll travel back in and out," he said.
"It's not necessary at this period in time (to put on more flights), we're letting people book onto earlier flights."
Evacuations by sea were underway on Corfu, where about 59 people were evacuated from a beach on Sunday. Footage from the island showed the skyline ablaze from fires in a mountain region.
On Rhodes, some holidaymakers said they walked for miles in scorching heat to reach safety. The fires left blackened trees and dead animals lay in the road near burnt-out cars.
Greece is often hit by wildfires during the summer months, but climate change has led to more extreme heatwaves across southern Europe.
Additional reporting Reuters
