More than thirty private boats participated this Saturday in an evacuation operation on the tourist island of Rhodes, in Greece, where a forest fire has been raging for five days.
According to the Greek Coast Guard, the evacuees were on the beaches of Kiotari and Lardos, on the east coast of this Mediterranean island.
Three Coast Guard vessels coordinated the operation, in which more than thirty private vessels participated, while a Greek navy vessel headed towards the area.
More than 1,500 people have already been evacuated to another beach, according to Agence France-Presse.
According to local authorities, some 30,000 people have already managed to leave the areas threatened by fires by various means in recent days.
According to the deputy fire chief, Yannis Artapoios, this fire, which started on a mountain in the center of the island, is the most difficult the Rhodes corporation has had to fight.
Five helicopters and 173 firefighters are battling the fire and three hotels in the Kiotari area were engulfed in flames.
The heat wave that hits Greece could be the longest in the country’s history, according to forecasts by the National Institute of Meteorology, which point to maximum temperatures of 45 degrees this weekend.
“According to the data, we are likely to experience 16 or 17 very hot days, which has never happened before in our country,” Kostas Lagouvardos, a researcher at the institute, told Greek public television.
Greece defines a heat wave as a period in which the temperature exceeds 39 degrees, the longest period so far being the 11 days recorded in 1987.
Source: TSF
