Greece wildfires: climate crisis will ‘manifest itself everywhere with greater disasters’, says Greek PM – live


Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has told parliament: “For the next few weeks we must be on constant alert. We are at war, we will rebuild what we lost, we will compensate those who were hurt,” Reuters reports.
He added: “The climate crisis is already here, it will manifest itself everywhere in the Mediterranean with greater disasters.”

Tour operators flew home nearly 1,500 holidaymakers at the start of a mass evacuation from wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes on Monday, Reuters said. Officials said the threat of further fires was high in almost every region of the country.

Ryanair said its flights to and from Rhodes were operating as normal and it was monitoring the situation on Monday. The airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said Ryanair had not seen passengers seeking to cancel flights to Rhodes over the weekend, given fires were more in the south of the island and the airport and most resorts in the north.

Key events

All Thomas Cook customers who had to leave their accommodation in Rhodes over the weekend are either returning home or staying in another hotel.

The travel firm said about 50 customers were forced to evacuated because of the wildfires that have hit part of the island, PA reports.

In a statement, it went on:

We no longer have any customers in evacuation centres.

We are in touch with customers who arrived on the island yesterday to areas unaffected by the fire and they are enjoying their holiday.

We will continue to monitor the situation and work with our local partners and local authorities to ensure the safety of our customers.

We are extending our policy for offering full and swift refunds to customers who are due to travel to Rhodes up to and including Wednesday 26 July and no longer wish to do so.

The Liberal Democrats are calling on the Foreign Office to add Rhodes to to its “red list” - and advise British nationals against all but essential travel, the BBC reports.

“Thanks to Conservative ministers’ inaction, many families are unable to make a claim against their insurance – leaving them paying the penalty for deciding not to fly out to the island,” the Lib Dems’ foreign affairs spokesperson said in a statement.

PA reports on the latest statements from airlines:

An easyJet spokeswoman said the company is doing “all it can” to help customers in Rhodes and invited those due to travel to or from the island until Saturday to change the date for free.

A Tui spokeswoman said the firm’s “main priority” is customers’ safety and its staff are doing “all they can” to help those affected by the fires.

The firm later said: “We appreciate how distressing and difficult it’s been for those who have been evacuated and ask that they continue to follow the advice of the local authorities and keep in touch with the Tui reps who are present in all evacuation centres. Our teams will be contacting customers with any updates as soon as they can.

“We have cancelled all outbound flights to Rhodes up to and including Tuesday, and passengers due to travel on these flights will receive full refunds.

“Passengers due to travel on Wednesday will be offered a fee-free amend to another holiday or the option to cancel for a full refund. We are still operating flights to bring those customers currently on holiday elsewhere in Rhodes home as planned.”

Jet2, which has cancelled all flights and holidays due to depart to Rhodes up to and including Sunday, has “significantly increased” the number of its staff on the island.”

Greece is often hit by wildfires during the summer months but the climate crisis has led to more extreme heatwaves across southern Europe, raising concerns that tourists will stay away, Reuters reports.

Tourism accounts for 18% of Greece’s GDP and one in five jobs. On Rhodes and many other Greek islands, reliance on tourism is even greater.

Civil Protection said practically every region of Greece was facing the threat of wildfires on Monday ranging from high, very high to state of alert.

Temperatures over the past week have exceeded 40C (104F) in many parts of the country and were forecast to persist in the coming days.

A firefighting helicopter makes a water drop as a wildfire burns near the village of Archangelos, on the island of Rhodes, Greece.

A firefighting helicopter makes a water drop as a wildfire burns near the village of Archangelos, on the island of Rhodes, Greece.
Photograph: Nicolas Economou/Reuters


Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has told parliament: “For the next few weeks we must be on constant alert. We are at war, we will rebuild what we lost, we will compensate those who were hurt,” Reuters reports.
He added: “The climate crisis is already here, it will manifest itself everywhere in the Mediterranean with greater disasters.”

Tour operators flew home nearly 1,500 holidaymakers at the start of a mass evacuation from wildfires on the Greek island of Rhodes on Monday, Reuters said. Officials said the threat of further fires was high in almost every region of the country.

Ryanair said its flights to and from Rhodes were operating as normal and it was monitoring the situation on Monday. The airline’s chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said Ryanair had not seen passengers seeking to cancel flights to Rhodes over the weekend, given fires were more in the south of the island and the airport and most resorts in the north.

Up to 10,000 Britons are estimated to be on fire-ravaged Rhodes, with repatriation flights to rescue holidaymakers landing back in the UK.

PA reported the Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said it was “peak holiday season”, with between 7,000 and 10,000 Britons estimated to be on the island.
He told Times Radio:

What we’re telling people to do is to keep in touch with their tourist company, and that is the right advice.

There were only 10 free beds on the whole island when I asked yesterday. But we think that something like 1,000 beds may well come back on stream today as others don’t now come and therefore more beds are available.”

In Greece, help has continued to arrive from the rest of the European Union and elsewhere, with Turkish firefighting planes joining the effort in Rhodes, where eight water-dropping planes and 10 helicopters buzzed over flames up to five meters (16 feet) tall despite low visibility, The Associated Press reports.

“The risk of fire will be extreme in several areas of Greece today,” a fire service spokesperson, Vassilis Vathrakogiannis ,said a day after temperatures on the southern Greek mainland hit 45C (113F).

Wildfires killed 15 people in the mountainous Bejaia and Bouira regions of Algeria on Monday, the interior ministry said, as a heatwave spreads across north Africa and southern Europe, Reuters reports.

About 7,500 firefighters were trying to bring the flames under control, authorities said. Firefighters were also at work in the Boumerdès, Tizi Ouzou, Jijel and Skikda regions. About 1,500 people had been evacuated.

A heatwave has hit north African countries, with temperatures reaching 49C (120F) in some Tunisian cities.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has contacted the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, to offer additional assistance.

“I called Mitsotakis to express our full support for Greece, which is confronted with devastating forest fires and a heavy heat wave due to climate change,” she tweeted.

I called @KMitsotakis to express our full support for Greece, which is confronted with devastating forest fires and a heavy heat wave due to climate change.

Greece is handling this difficult situation with professionalism, putting emphasis on safely evacuating thousands of… https://t.co/WhQ3udTlX6

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) July 23, 2023

Dr Douglas Kelley, a land surface modeller at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said:

It is too early to say if climate change has caused these wildfires. However, the fact there are now so many across the world, most recently in Greece and Canada, is a clear sign that climate change is causing an increase in the number of severe wildfires globally.

Heatwaves such as the one in Greece are more likely under climate change. A heatwave dries out vegetation and dead plant material, which makes the fires more intense and spread much faster, especially with the recent high winds.

While not uncommon in southern Europe, what was unusual about the fires in Rhodes was the intensity and the speed at which they spread. We predict there will be a global increase in these extreme fires of up 50% by the end of the century.

There is a feedback loop where fires in ecosystems that store large amounts of carbon, such as forests, result in the release of vast quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This exacerbates global warming, which in turn increases the risk of wildfires.

Even if we reduce greenhouse gas emissions, there are likely to be more wildfire events by 2100 because global temperatures are continuing to rise and are expected to reach 1.5 to 2 degrees celsius higher than pre-industrial times. This means that communities in some regions will need to adapt to increases in burning.’’

Greek authorities say they have evacuated nearly 2,500 people from Corfu on Monday, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Earlier, the UK’s Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said no evacuations were taking place on the island on Monday morning.

About 2,400 visitors and locals were evacuated from the Ionian island on Sunday and Monday, a local fire service spokesperson has said, adding that the departures are a precaution.

“We are at war and are exclusively geared towards the fire front,” the Greek prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, told parliament, warning that the country faced “another three difficult days ahead” before high temperatures were forecast to ease.

Downing Street has defended its decision not to discourage Britons from going to Rhodes, saying it does not want to “act out of proportion to the situation on the ground”. The government has sent a small Foreign Office team to help holidaymakers. Now, the prime minister’s official spokesperson has said:

Our advice is focused on the safety of British nationals and enabling people to make an informed decision about the situation on the ground.

The current situation is impacting on a limited area in Rhodes and, whilst it’s right to keep it under review and it’s possible that the advice may change, we do not want to act out of proportion to the situation on the ground.

He said there were “not currently” plans to get the RAF to help people leave.