More than 30,000 people were evacuated from the touristic Greek island of Rhodes, where the flames continued to rage this Sunday for the sixth consecutive day, and it was about “the biggest operation” of its kind “ever carried out in Greece”, whipped by a heat wave that affects much of the northern hemisphere, local authorities reported.
“This is the largest evacuation ever carried out in Greece. Everything went well. Everyone, especially the tourists, complied with what we had ordered”stressed spokeswoman Konstantia Dimoglidou.
In Greece, firefighters reported 46 new fires in 24 hours, and the flames continued to rage on Sunday, for sixth day in a row in eastern Rhodesan island of 100,000 popular with British, German and French tourists.
Yesterday some 30,000 people had to leave their homes and hotels due to the advance of the fire and the evacuated tourists spent the night in gyms, schools or conference centers, the AFP agency reported.
Total 12 towns were evacuatedincluding Lindos, one of the main tourist destinations on the island.
On Saturday night, the flames reached the town of Laerma, devouring several houses and a church.
The fires spread to the coastal towns of Kiotari and Gennadi Lardos.
“The embers fluttered over our heads and help did not arrive. I had the feeling that we had been abandoned, it was so hot and the smoke was already so thick that we could not have lasted more than ten minutes,” Paul F., a 23-year-old German tourist who was able to be evacuated along with a group of tourists, told the Bild newspaper.
The Greek Foreign Ministry opened a “crisis cell” in Athens to facilitate the repatriation of foreigners.
Suspension of flights for repatriation
For his part, the TUI and JeT2 companies suspended their flights to the islandand announced that the planes will travel empty there in order to repatriate the tourists.
The Dutch tour operator Corendon announced a similar outage, according to local media.
According to the authorities “It will take several days to put out the flames”blown by strong winds.
Thermometers are expected to exceed 44 degrees this Sunday.
“According to our data, we will probably experience a heat wave of 16 to 17 days, something that has never happened in our country”declared the research director of the national meteorological observatory, Kostas Lagouvardos.
Extreme temperatures
All archaeological sites in Greece, including the famous Acropolis of Athens, they will remain closed to the public during the hottest hours of the day.
Since the beginning of summer, extreme temperatures oppress tens of millions of people in much of the northern hemisphereand, according to expert forecasts, “July could become the hottest month ever recorded in history.”
In USA, Weather services warned that 80 million Americans will have to endure temperatures of 41 degrees or higher over the weekend.
In Phoenix, the capital of Arizona (Southwest), which is facing its longest spell of heat on record with 22 straight days with temperatures above 43 degrees, “could top 46 degrees.”
In the remainder of July, the heat wave is expected to move toward the center of the country, skirting the Rocky Mountains and settling in the great plains of the Midwest, according to the US Oceanic and Atmospheric Observation Agency (NOAA).
In Canada, scene of record floods due to torrential rains, four people, including two children, are missing in the eastern province of New Scotland, the police announced.
“Some regions have already received more than 150 millimeters of rain,” the meteorological services stressed, specifying that additional rainfall “of a tropical nature” was expected, of at least 40 to 100 millimeters.
With heat waves across Europe, the Americas and Asia, July is on track to become the hottest on record on Earth.not only since the beginning of the measurements, but also in “centuries, if not thousands of years,” NASA’s head of climatology, Gavin Schmidt, told reporters.
And this is not only due to El Niño, the cyclical climate phenomenon that is born in the Pacific Ocean and causes an increase in planetary temperatures, he clarified.
Compared to the pre-industrial era, the world is experiencing a warming of about 1.2 degrees as a result of human activity, mainly from the use of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), he concluded.
Source: Ambito
