France, which widened its heatwave red alert in the south of the country, said it would scale back production at a nuclear power plant as high temperatures curbed cooling water supply. In Greece, firefighters battled a blaze for a second day close to Athens, and authorities warned that heat and winds risked stoking more wildfires a day after 18 bodies, probably migrants, were found in a charred northern forest. A wildfire north of Athens that erupted on Tuesday has smothered the capital in smoke and ash, spreading to the town of Menidi, where about 150 people were evacuated from three nursing homes. Police ordered others to leave as a helicopter clattered overhead to drop water onto the conflagration. "The fire went out for half an hour.... but with these very strong winds, it's been alternately starting and then stopping again," 60-year-old resident Dimitris Armenis told Reuters. A volunteer carried an icon of the Virgin Mary out of a burning monastery, while police raced to remove large gas canisters from the ash-covered premises. Another 700 people were moved from a migrant camp in the Amygdaleza region, about 25 km (16 miles) north of Athens, a Migration Ministry official said. Greek Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said 355 wildfires had broken out since Friday, with 209 new blazes in the last 48 hours alone. Near the northeastern Greek port city of Alexandroupolis, dozens of hospital patients, some on stretchers, others attached to IV drips, were evacuated onto a ferry as a fire in the area blazed for a fifth day. Authorities were trying to identify the 18 bodies discovered on Tuesday in Dadia forest in the Evros region on Turkey's border, on a common route for migrants from the Middle East and Asia trying to cross into the European Union. SHIPPING DISRUPTED On the Turkish side, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday crews had stopped the Canakkale fire's spread and it would be under control shortly. He said more than 150 ships were halted on the Dardanelles Strait to allow helicopters and planes to scoop up water to contain a forest fire in the area that was raging for a second day. The strait, linking the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea, is a major shipping route for commodities such as oil and grains. The French national weather service, Meteo-France, reported the country's highest average temperature for the late summer period after Aug. 15 since records began in 1947. It said some areas of southern France would experience temperatures of 42 degree Celsius (108 degrees Fahrenheit). French power producer EDF issued a production warning for the Saint Alban nuclear power plant on the Rhone river because of a shortage of cooling water. Similar warnings have been issued this summer for other plants. The heatwave has even reached the region's highest peak, Mont Blanc with authorities urging climbers to delay their ascent because of an increased risk of rock falls and new crevices on glaciers from melting snow. "It has definitely changed in that time and routes are changing ... you can almost see it, just melting away very slowly," said Australian alpinist Daniel Trevena, who has been coming to the region for 10 years. In Spain, which is enduring its fourth heatwave of the summer, people who normally receive food and other necessities from the non-governmental organisation Fundacion Madrina were also handed fans on Wednesday to cope with high temperatures. In Madrid's El Rastrillo square, fashion worker Daniela said she was struggling to keep cool: "I’m really hoping it is over, this is the last heatwave." Firefighters on the Spanish island of Tenerife brought under control a blaze that devastated forests, allowing about 8,000 evacuees to return. But local farmers protested about the use of scarce water resources to fight the blaze and police said they had arrested an 80-year-old man for throwing stones at a firefighting helicopter, forcing it to make an emergency landing. Italy issued heatwave red alerts about "emergency conditions" that the health ministry says could endanger the healthy, as well as those who are frail, in 17 of its 27 main cities for Wednesday and Thursday, including Rome, Milan, Florence and Venice. The number was set to rise to 19 on Friday.

Greece’s largest forest fire was burning out of control for the fifth day near the city of Alexandroupolis in the northeast. Another major blaze on the outskirts of Athens torched homes, reducing some to piles of smoking rubble, and encroached into the national park on Mount Parnitha, one of the last green areas near the Greek capital. From Friday to Tuesday, 355 wildfires broke out, Climate Crisis and Civil Protection Minister Vassilis Kikilias said. On Wednesday, firefighters were tackling 99 blazes, fire department spokesman Ioannis Artopios said in an evening briefing, including 55 that had broken out in the previous 24 hours. Authorities made 140 wildfire-related arrests, including 117 for negligence and 23 for deliberate arson, Artopios said, adding that nearly all were for heat-inducing or agricultural outdoor work. Gale-force winds combined with hot, dry weather to whip up the flames, making the blazes exceptionally difficult to bring under control, authorities said. Weather conditions this summer have been “the worst since meteorological data have been gathered and the fire risk map has been issued in the country,” Kikilias told a news conference. Extensive parts of Greece have been placed at Level 5, the highest for fire risk, seven times this year, which Kikilias said was double the number of 2021, four times that of 2019 and seven times more than in 2012. Authorities issued dozens of evacuation orders for villages, Alexandroupolis’ outskirts and seaside areas, with the coast guard and private boats plucking some people from beaches and coasts. Although winds were gradually abating in many parts of the country, the risk of new fires remained high. “Conditions remain difficult and in many cases extreme,” Artopios said. Firefighters searching recently burnt areas in the Alexandroupolis region, which is near the border with Turkey, discovered the bodies of 18 people believed to be migrants in a forest Tuesday. Alexandroupolis coroner Pavlos Pavlidis told The Associated Press all were male and two were minors between 10 and 15 years old. Greece’s Disaster Victim Identification Team was tasked with identifying the bodies and was setting up a telephone hotline that would operate 9am-5pm local time (0600GMT-1400GMT) from Thursday in English, Arabic, Pashto, Turkish and Urdu for potential relatives of the victims. 2 other people died Monday, one in northern and one in central Greece. With firefighting forces stretched to the limit, Greece asked other European countries for assistance. Germany, Sweden, Croatia and Cyprus sent water-dropping aircraft. Romanian, French and Czech firefighters helped on the ground. Evacuations were ordered for several neighborhoods and a migrant camp on the northwestern fringe of the Greek capital, as a wildfire that started Tuesday raced up a mountain toward Parnitha national park, threatened a military base and torched homes in the foothills. More than 200 firefighters backed by volunteers, military and police forces, were battling the blaze, supported until nightfall by 12 planes and 14 helicopters. In Alexandroupolis, 17 planes and eight helicopters provided air support to the ground firefighting forces. Supreme Court prosecutor Georgia Adilini asked the Alexandroupolis prosecutor to launch investigations into whether organized arson groups were operating in the region. Kikilias said the fire in the northeastern border region started in 15 different places inside a forest, with strong winds and dry conditions contributing to create a massive fire front. “Any firefighting forces, no matter how strong they were, would not have been able to bring it under control,” Kikilias said. Adilini also asked the Alexandroupolis prosecutor to investigate incidents of racist violence after police arrested three men on suspicion of imprisoning 13 migrants whom they accused of being linked to the wildfire. One Albanian and two Greeks were charged Wednesday with a series of crimes, including kidnapping, and were being held pending a preliminary court hearing. A video posted online showed one of them referring to the migrants in terminology used for livestock and urging members of the public to round up migrants. Across the border in Turkey’s Canakkale province, strong winds fanned a wildfire for a second day. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said winds reaching 70 kilometers (40 miles) per hour at times were hampering efforts to extinguish the blaze but said firefighters had managed to halt its spread. “Hopefully, we will get it under control soon,” Erdogan said in a televised address. Ibrahim Yumakli, Turkey’s forestry minister, said firefighting teams and more than two dozen fire-dousing planes and helicopters had largely blocked the blaze from spreading beyond the 15 square kilometers (5.8 square miles) it had already affected. Authorities suspended maritime traffic through the narrow Dardanelles Strait linking the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara, which the water-dropping aircraft were using to refill, the minister said. Authorities evacuated an elderly care home and more than 1,250 people from nine villages and closed down a highway. Hospitals treated more than 80 people for the effects of smoke. Erdogan urged citizens to exercise care and help prevent wildfires. “Unfortunately, more than 90% of fires in our country are caused by humans,” he said. “Negligence or carelessness lead to great disasters.” In Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands, authorities said a wildfire burning for more than a week was nearly under control after scorching 150 square kilometers (58 square miles). “It’s a very tough battle that the firefighting teams are winning,” said Canary regional government counselor Manuel Miranda. Spain is sweltering under its fourth heat wave this summer. The country’s weather service said up to 16 temperature records for August were broken Tuesday. Sporadic fires were also reported in Italy, which has been engulfed in a heat wave expected to extend into the weekend with temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius (100 F) in many cities. With their hot, dry summers, southern European countries are particularly prone to wildfires. European Union officials have blamed climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires in Europe, noting that 2022 was the second-worst year for wildfire damage on record after 2017.

The discovery near the city of Alexandroupolis came as hundreds of firefighters battled dozens of wildfires across the country amid gale-force winds. On Monday, two people died and two firefighters were injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece. With their hot, dry summers, southern European countries are particularly prone to wildfires. Another major blaze has been burning across Tenerife in Spain’s Canary Islands for a week, although no injuries or damage to homes was reported. European Union officials have blamed climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires in Europe, noting that 2022 was the second-worst year for wildfire damage on record after 2017. In Greece, police activated the country’s Disaster Victim Identification Team to identify the 18 bodies, which were found near a shack in the Avantas area, fire department spokesman Ioannis Artopios said. “Given that there have been no reports of a missing person or missing residents from the surrounding areas, the possibility is being investigated that these are people who had entered the country illegally,” Artopios said. Alexandroupolis is near the border with Turkey, along a route often taken by people fleeing poverty and conflict in the Middle East, Asia and Africa and seeking to enter the European Union. Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou expressed sorrow at the deaths in a statement. “We must urgently take effective initiatives to ensure that this bleak reality does not become the new normality,” she added, referring to the recurrent wildfires. Avantas, like many nearby villages and settlements, had been under evacuation orders, with push alerts in Greek and English sent to all mobile phones in the region. The fire service said it was investigating the causes of the blazes, in coordination with the police and secret service. In recent days, several people have been arrested or fined for accidentally starting fires. But the discovery of the 18 bodies triggered a backlash by some who accused migrants of starting fires. Late Monday, police said they detained three men in Alexandroupolis suspected of kidnapping and illegally holding 13 migrants. One of the suspects was a man seen in video posted on social media shutting a group of migrants in a trailer and accusing them of “intending to burn us,” a statement from national police headquarters said. Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis issued a statement condemning vigilante acts. Overnight, a massive wall of flames raced through forests toward Alexandroupolis, prompting authorities to evacuate eight more villages and the city’s hospital as flames reddened the sky. Deputy Health Minister Dimitris Vartzopoulos, speaking on Greece’s Skai television, said smoke and ash in the air around the hospital were the main reasons behind the decision to evacuate the facility. The coast guard said patrol boats and private vessels evacuated an additional 40 people by sea from beaches near Alexandroupolis. In the northeastern Evros border region, a fire was burning through forest in a protected national park, with satellite imagery showing smoke blanketing much of northern and western Greece. New fires broke out in several parts of the country Tuesday, including in woodland northwest of Athens and an industrial area on the capital’s western fringes. Small explosions echoed from the industrial area of Aspropyrgos as flames reached warehouses and factories. Authorities shut down a highway and ordered the evacuation of nearby settlements. With firefighting forces stretched to the limit, Greece appealed for help from the European Union’s civil protection mechanism. 5 water-dropping planes from Croatia, Germany and Sweden, and a helicopter, 58 firefighters and nine water tanks from the Czech Republic flew to Greece Tuesday, while 56 Romanian firefighters and two aircraft from Cyprus arrived Monday. French firefighters helped tackle a blaze on the island of Evia on Monday. “We are mobilizing actually almost one-third of the aircraft we have in the rescEU fleet,” said EU spokesman Balazs Ujvari. The fire risk level for several regions, including the wider Athens area, was listed as “extreme” for a second day Tuesday. Authorities banned public access to mountains and forests in those regions until at least Wednesday morning and ordered military patrols. In Spain, firefighters battled to control a wildfire burning for a week on the popular Canary Islands tourist destination of Tenerife. It is estimated that the blaze, which has scorched 150 square kilometers (59 square miles), has already burnt a third of Tenerife’s woodlands. More than 12,000 people were evacuated during the past week. Authorities said Tuesday that 1,500 have been able to return to their homes. Authorities have described the fire as the worst in decades on the Atlantic archipelago. Large parts of Spain were under alert for wildfires as temperatures reached more than 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit). While Spain’s south often has extremely high temperatures, the country’s weather agency issued an alert for the northern Basque Country, where temperatures were forecast to reach 42 degrees Celsius (107 degrees Fahrenheit) Wednesday. Greece’s deadliest wildfire killed 104 people in 2018, at a seaside resort near Athens that residents had not been warned to evacuate. Authorities have since erred on the side of caution, issuing swift mass evacuation orders whenever inhabited areas are threatened. Last month, a wildfire on the island of Rhodes forced the evacuation of some 20,000 tourists. Days later, two air force pilots were killed when their water-dropping plane crashed while diving low to tackle a blaze on Evia. A week-old wildfire on the Greek resort island of Rhodes tore past defenses Monday, forcing more evacuations as strong winds and successive heat waves that left scrubland and forests tinder-dry fueled three major fires raging elsewhere in Greece. (July 24) In Italy, authorities evacuated 700 people from homes and a campsite on the Tuscan island of Elba after a fire broke out late Monday, while in Turkey authorities evacuated nine villages in the northwestern Canakkale province. Turkish media also said that authorities reduced maritime traffic in the Dardanelles Strait in case firefighting vessels need to be deployed to the area. According to the Italian Society of Environmental Geology, more than 1,100 fires in Europe this summer have consumed 2,842 square kilometers (about 1,100 square miles), well above an average of 724 fires a year recorded from 2006-2022. The fires have removed wooded areas capable of absorbing 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. “When we add the fires in Canada, the United States, Africa, Asia and Australia to those in Europe, it seems that the situation is getting worse every year,″ said SIGEA president Antonello Fiore.

In Spain’s Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa, a nearly week-old fire blamed on arson continued out of control in what has been a busy fire season for southern European countries. European Union officials have blamed climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires in Europe, noting that 2022 was the second-worst year for wildfire damage on record after 2017. Greek officials said the body of a man was recovered in an area of the central Viotia region under evacuation orders, and local media reported he apparently died of smoke inhalation while trying to save his sheep. Police said late Monday that another man was found dead in a burned forest in the northeastern Evros region, and two firefighters were hospitalized for injuries suffered battling a fire in the northern Kavala region. Evacuation orders were issued for villages in Greece’s northern regions of Alexandroupolis, Komotini, Kavala and Orestiada, the central region of Viotia and the island of Evia. Fire departments across the country were put on general alert. “The last 48 hours, unfortunately like the next 48 hours, are proving exceptionally critical due to the strong winds and high temperatures that are creating extensive fire fronts,” said Vasilis Kikilias, Greece’s minister for climate crisis and civil protection. Since midnight, he said, 53 additional fires had broken out in Greece, including 14 in the Evros border region alone. The government held an emergency meeting of the heads of the fire department, police, coast guard, armed forces and intelligence services. Authorities banned public access to mountains and forests in several regions until at least Wednesday morning and ordered military patrols. The largest active wildfire was ravaging forest and farmland for a third day near the northeastern town of Alexandroupolis, where 13 villages were evacuated and several homes were destroyed over the weekend. Late Monday, health authorities started to partially evacuate a hospital on the outskirts of Alexandroupolis as a precaution. They moved out many of the estimated 200 patients in buses and ambulances, while keeping the more severely ill people in their wards and maintaining emergency services open. More than 200 firefighters, assisted by 17 water-dropping aircraft, volunteers and troops were battling the fire, said Deputy Fire Chief Ioannis Artopios, a spokesman for the national fire service. Residents in Alexandroupolis were advised to keep their windows shut due to the smoke. 56 firefighters from Romania and two water-dropping aircraft from Cyprus were heading to Alexandroupolis, while 19 French firefighters were helping tackle the Evia fire. Greece suffers destructive wildfires every summer. Its deadliest wildfire killed 104 people in 2018, at a seaside resort near Athens that residents had not been warned to evacuate. Authorities have since erred on the side of caution, issuing swift mass evacuation orders whenever inhabited areas are under threat. Last month, a wildfire on the resort island of Rhodes forced the evacuation of some 20,000 tourists. Days later, two air force pilots were killed when their water-dropping plane crashed while diving low to tackle a blaze on Evia. Another three wildfire-related deaths have been recorded this summer. On Tenerife island, in Spain’s Canary Islands off the coast of West Africa, a wildfire that police say was started deliberately last Tuesday continued to burn out of control. More than 12,000 people have been evacuated and about 13,400 hectares (33,000 acres) of pine forest and scrubland have burned. Acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said the fire area would be declared a catastrophe zone, entitling the island to funds for reforestation and compensation for people affected. The Canary Island regional president, Fernando Clavijo, told Spain’s Cadena SER radio that “the worst is over,” saying hundreds of firefighters had made progress. The fire in the northeast of the island is not near any of the main tourist areas. The flames have come close to some 10 municipalities, but there have been no injuries or burned homes so far. In Portugal and Italy, two other southern European countries often plagued by summer wildfires, temperatures were predicted to soar this week. Italian authorities issued heat warnings for eight cities from Bolzano in the north to Rome in central Italy on Monday as temperatures were forecast to hit 38 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit). Storm warnings were in effect in the southern regions of Calabria, Basilicata and Sicily. In Portugal, temperatures were forecast to reach 44 degrees Celsius (111 degrees Fahrenheit) in some southern parts of the country.  

The emergency number 112 on Sunday afternoon sent a message to the residents of  3 settlements, Avantas, Amfitriti and Maistros, to evacuate and move towards the city of Alexandroupolis. Earlier, 112 sent a message to the residents of Monastiraki and Doriskos to evacuate towards Feres. According to the latest information from the Fire Brigade, the fire is in full progress on three main fronts with the largest southeast of the village Loutros heading to Monastiraki and Doriskos. In the area are blowing strong winds up to 7 on the Beaufort scale that make the condition very difficult and dangerous. Meanwhile, police has again suspended the traffic on Egnatia Odos Kipi-Alexandroupolis due to the wildfire that is raging in the area. Traffic has been interrupted from Ardani interchange to Industrial Zone of Alexandroupolis interchange on both directions. Traffic is diverted to Feres-Alexandroupolis motorway. A new message via the emergency number 112 was sent on Sunday to the citizens of Alexandroupolis to stay indoors with closed windows and doors due to the smoke from the major wildfire that is raging in the area. The message said "Alexandroupolis, a wildfire is in progress; smoke is moving towards your area. Remain indoors with closed windows and doors".

"My life now stopped," he said. "Everything is taken by the fire." Inside his destroyed business in the coastal village of Gennadi, stacks of plates are covered in ash and debris near a burned-down kitchen. The wildfires on the Aegean island have been burning for a week, forcing 20,000 people, most of them tourists, to flee in the scorching heat over the weekend, some on foot, others by sea as the nighttime sky turned an apocalyptic orange. The flames swallowed up trees, burned cars, damaged homes and hotels and left animals dead in the streets. About 10% of the island's land area had burned, according to the Greek state broadcaster ERT, but the scale of the destruction has yet to be officially recorded. For the residents of Rhodes, which like most Greek islands depends heavily on tourism for jobs and income, the scars run deep. "I do two jobs. One is the restaurant, the other is that I am a farmer. All my fields, now it's nothing, just black," said Hadjifotis, who spent the winter renovating his business. "We don't know from where to start now. We don't have money to do something to rebuild the restaurant." Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who told parliament on Monday that the country was "at war," pledged to rebuild what was lost and compensate those who were hurt by the fires on Rhodes and elsewhere in the country where blazes have raged uncontrolled. "We don't expect anything big. But we wait," Hadjifotis said. "We want the fire to stop. Not other houses to burn, not other restaurants, not other fields," he said. Summer wildfires are common in Greece but record temperatures in recent weeks have worsened conditions. A heatwave is forecast to persist this week with temperatures set to exceed 44 Celsius (111.2 Fahrenheit) in some areas. As more than 3,000 holidaymakers have been flown home to safety since Monday, for the locals left behind, the road to normality will be long. Lefteris Laoudikos, whose family owns a small hotel in the seaside town of Kiotari, also at the epicenter of the blaze, says the attention now needs to focus on efforts to rebuild, saying he is confident visitors will return. His father, cousin and two others saved their property after spending the night putting out the flames using a nearby water tank as they waited for assistance. Gesturing to his cousin Petros, he said: "He's one of the reasons that this building still exists." "We're not afraid," he said. "We have to win this war again and win the trust of the people."

As emphasized in the relevant announcement, the local investigative offices, as well as units of the Directorate for Combating Arson Crimes (D.A.E.E.) are investigating the causes of the fires. With regard to the fire that broke out today at noon in a forest area in the "Fasouli" location of the municipality of Opuntia, Fthiotida, 42 firefighters with two groups of pedestrian units, 16 vehicles, two aircraft and a helicopter are working. Subsidiaries are provided by local water bodies and project machinery. Finally, the Fire Department appeals to citizens to be especially careful and in the event of a fire, for their own safety, to follow the instructions of the competent authorities.

These regions are Attica, Central Greece (especially Evia, Boeotia and Skyros island), Peloponnese (Korinthia, Argolida), Central Macedonia, Eastern Macedonia-Thrace (including Evros and Samothraki island), and North Aegean (Lesvos, Chios and Lemnos islands).

Some 45 firefighters with 13 fire engines, 2 ground teams and 2 water-dowsing helicopters are operating to put it out. According to earlier information by the Fire Brigade the fire started at the junction of Eolou and Olympionikon Streets, near houses. 

The quick team effort meant that “by the time the fire brigade came, most of the fire actually was dealt with,” said Elena Korosteleva from Britain, who was vacationing at the Lindos Memories hotel. The next morning, some unsettled guests cut their holiday short — but most stayed on as the resort wasn’t damaged in the small brush fire outside its grounds. The Greek island known for sparkling beaches and ancient sites is nursing its wounds after 11 days of devastating wildfires in July. After thousands of people were evacuated during the height of travel season, Rhodes is weighing how the crisis will affect its vital tourism sector, which fuels most of its economy and some 20% of Greece’s. The mayor of Villardeciervos village, in part of northwestern Spain ravaged by fires last summer, said hikers are still coming. “Tourism is bound to suffer a bit in the next few years, (whether) we like it or not,” Rosa María López said. “On the hiking trails, there are no trees, and it is very sad to see. … But this area is still highly valued by tourists in spite of everything. We will have to adapt.” Fires have chased away tourists in hard-hit parts of Greece and Italy. Rhodes saw mass cancellations of flights and the trend is similar in Sicily, said Olivier Ponti, vice president of insights at ForwardKeys, a travel data company with access to airline industry ticketing data. While travel to Greece overall has not been hit too hard, Italy isn’t as lucky. Wildfires “have caused a slowdown in bookings for many Italian destinations, even places not close to the fires,” he said, noting a drop for Rome in the last week of July. Even without the flames, summer heat intensified by climate change can be a turnoff for travelers. Hoteliers are worried in southeastern Spain’s coastal resort city of Benidorm, a longtime favorite for British and Scandinavian tourists. “If heat waves were to be repeated every summer, the impact on our economy would be significant,” said Antonio Mayor, chair of the hotel and tourism association in the Valencia region, which includes Benidorm. “Our activity is centered on the three summer months.” That could mean tourists head north to Scandinavian countries or the United Kingdom instead. “Record-setting temperatures in European countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain are not scheduled to ease up as we enter August, so it might be considered a much safer option to opt for a stay in northern Europe,” said Tim Hentschel, CEO of digital booking platform HotelPlanner. The World Meteorological Organization and the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service calculated July to be the hottest month on record. Heat records foreshadow changes ahead as the planet warms, scientists say, including more flooding, longer-burning wildfires and extreme weather events that put people at risk. With that in mind, U.S.-based climate technology startup Sensible Weather is developing insurance that would compensate people if extreme heat wrecks their holiday. It’s rolled out “weather guarantee” coverage to travel companies in the U.K., France and the U.S., which pays travelers if prolonged rain ruins their beach break or there’s no snow for a ski trip. Sensible Weather will soon add a heat cover option “in anticipation of next summer,” founder Nick Cavanaugh said. “People are asking me about it more because they’re thinking about these things more.” While people differ on how hot is too hot, “in the simplest version, if it was 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit) for three hours in the middle of the day and you couldn’t go out and do an activity, we could give you some money back,” he said. Rhodes had expected foreign arrivals to increase 8%-10% over a bumper year in 2022, when about 2.6 million people flew in to the Greek island, mostly from Britain and Germany. But after the fires, flight cancellations in the last week of July exceeded all bookings made in the equivalent week in 2019, said Ponti of ForwardKeys. Manolis Markopoulos, head of the Rhodes hotel association, is optimistic that rebounding arrivals to parts of the island not damaged by flames can salvage much of the projected boost in tourism. “Every day we’re seeing more business,” he said. “By Aug. 8-10, I think we’ll be back to our normal pace at all these resorts,” which account for about 90% of the island’s 220,000 beds. In damaged areas, “some brave tour operators have already decided to bring customers from this coming weekend,” Markopoulos said. “These areas have a longer road before they return to normality — but they’re not even 10% of the (island’s) total capacity.” New bookings for future travel to Rhodes did take a hit, falling 76% the week of July 17, when the fires began, over the previous week. For Greece as a whole, they slumped 10%, Ponti said. While some major British operators briefly canceled all Rhodes flights and holidays — offering refunds to people who’d booked for fire-hit areas — other budget airlines kept offering seats and reported normal travel figures, HotelPlanner’s Hentschel said. In Germany, leading travel operator TUI is again offering vacations to all parts of Rhodes after it stopped flying tourists in. “We would do more damage to the people of Rhodes if no more tourists came now after the forest fires,” TUI CEO Sebastian Ebel told Germany’s dpa news agency. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered an additional incentive, appearing on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” this week to promise people whose Rhodes vacations were spoiled by the fires a free week on the island next spring or fall. Korosteleva, the Rhodes vacationer, said the blazes should motivate action against climate change. “It makes people aware what we’ve caused to the planet, that this change may not be reversible. So it’s not just about tourism,” said Korosteleva, who heads the University of Warwick’s Institute of Global Sustainable Development. “I think it actually clearly touches upon how we need to start acting now.”

The blazes, fanned by rising temperatures and strong winds, have killed five people, destroyed homes, farms and factories and scorched swathes of forest land since July 17th. As events concluded on Sunday at the sailing championships, coaches spotted the trapped people and boarded motorised support boats to head toward a village nearby to evacuate the residents as well as to help native wildlife that were similarly stranded, the statement said. As many as 60 boats were involved in the operation, saving more than 130 people who were ferried back to Volos.     “When we got the call for help from the coast guard, I knew we had the right people and equipment for the job,” Labis Tsoukalas, president of the Nautical Club of Volos and Argonauts, said in the statement. “It’s a credit to [the coaches] that we were able carry out the rescue successfully.”

In particular, a very high risk of fire is predicted tomorrow for the following areas: - Region of Attica - Region of Central Greece (Evia) - Region of the Ionian Islands (PE of Corfu, PE of Kefallinia, PE of Ithaca, PE of Zakynthos) - North Aegean Region (Lesvos Region, Chios Region, Samos Region, Ikaria Region) The General Secretariat of Civil Protection (civilprotection.gov.gr) of the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection has informed the competent state agencies involved in the official service, as well as the Regions and Municipalities of the above regions, so that they are on increased civil protection readiness in order to face any fire incidents immediately. At the same time, the General Secretariat of Civil Protection recommends that citizens be especially careful and avoid actions in the open air that can cause a fire by negligence, such as burning dry grass and branches or cleaning residues, the use of machines that cause sparks such as circular saws, welding devices , the use of outdoor grills, the smoking of bees, the throwing of lit cigarettes, etc. Also, it is recalled that during the fire protection season burning of fields is prohibited. In the event of a fire, citizens are requested to immediately notify the Fire Service at the number 199. For more information and self-protection instructions from the dangers of forest fires, citizens can visit the website of the General Secretariat of Civil Protection at civilprotection.gov.gr.