Greece. Rhodes ravaged by fires. TVN24 reporter on site

Greece has been battling wildfires for several days. Not only the vicinity of Athens, where Polish firefighters operate today, is on fire, but also the islands. You can follow the map of fires in Greece on TVN24.pl.

Our reporter Dominika Ziółkowska is on the island of Rhodes, where the situation is most serious. She reported that the greatest damage was caused by the flames in the south-eastern regions, including Lardos. “It was a priority for the Greek services to put out the fire here, which reached the resorts,” she said.

The fire literally devastated the island. “Firefighters are still operating inland and are focused on suppressing the fire in the mountainous and rocky areas to keep it under control. The situation is still not under control, and it is not helped by a very strong wind, whose gusts change direction all the time, so it is difficult to control and predict – described the reporter.

The scale of the damage is illustrated by the landscape of the dunes. Once covered with vegetation typical of the region, now they are terrifying. – In the valley of the mountain where there is a fire above, you can see a burnt hangar – perhaps it was a beach bar or some place where tourists rested. Now it looks like there’s nothing there […] The ground is almost black, incinerated. And unfortunately, this fire is active all the time, it is dangerous and it was from these areas that people were evacuated – added the TVN24 envoy.

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The sirens of the fire trucks are still ringing in the region.

– When we were going this way, we were stopped by the police, we said that we were journalists from Poland and we wanted to report what was happening here. We asked if it was safe. They said that the motorway is safe, passable and we will definitely see what we are looking for, because there are a lot of burnt areas here – she reported.

Ziółkowska added that the situation worsened the most in the night from Saturday to Sunday, because the wind suddenly changed direction. However, tourists were reassured for a long time and kept in the belief that the situation was under control. – They often received information at the last minute that there was an evacuation. There were people who were in the pool and found out they had to evacuate and left as they were, often without their luggage, she said.

>>> Read more: Tourists evacuated from the island of Rhodes landed at Okęcie. They talk about escaping from fires

“It’s hard to breathe, it’s hard to talk about any safety when there’s a fire smoldering all the time,” she concluded.