‘We shouldn’t be here’: British tourists tell of
nightmare in Rhodes fires
Travel company Tui criticised for still flying
holidaymakers out to Greek island on Saturday night
Josh
Halliday North of England correspondent
Sun 23 Jul
2023 11.44 BST
British
tourists said they had been left in “a living nightmare” after wildfires caused
the emergency evacuation of 19,000 people on the Greek island of Rhodes.
More than
3,000 people were rescued from beaches and another 16,000 taken to safety on
land as flames intensified in the south-eastern region of the island on
Saturday.
The wildfires,
which began six days ago, had prompted the biggest evacuation from a blaze in
Greece’s history, the Athens government said on Sunday.
The British
travel companies Jet2 and Tui cancelled flights to Rhodes on Sunday as
officials warned of further fires due to the prolonged heatwave across southern
Europe.
EasyJet
said its flights to Rhodes were “operating as normal” but that it would
continue to monitor the situation.
A
spokesperson for Jet2 said its five aircraft would fly to the island without
passengers and would bring home those due to leave Rhodes on scheduled flights.
Tui said it had cancelled all flights and holidays up to and including Tuesday
25 July.
However,
Tui was criticised for flying holidaymakers out as late as Saturday night, when
many hotels had been evacuated due to the worsening situation.
Holidaymakers
described scenes of panic and chaos on beaches where thousands of people waited
to be rescued.
One said
they saw children falling into the sea from evacuation boats as ash fell from
the sky. Another described people abandoning their belongings on beaches as
they clambered aboard rescue vessels.
Ian
Murison, from London, likened the evacuation to “the end of the world” as the
sea turned black with soot and people rushed towards rescue boats.
Murison
said he and his family had walked almost four miles in scorching heat towards
Gennadi beach, where they were met by a scene of chaos.
“Thousands
moved on to the beach. It was impossible to get on to coaches because people
just ran. It was literally like the end of the world and the flames were now
far more visible because of course it’s night-time and we couldn’t see that
during the day,” he told Sky News.
“Suddenly
there were leaping flames into the sky, and the sky was completely orange in
the distance, so that sort of set about a level of panic.”
Murison
said there were hundreds or thousands of people left on the beach, which was littered
with suitcases that had been thrown off the rescue boat so more families could
be taken to safety.
He said:
“My wife ... was finding it stressful, particularly when they said it was women
and children only on the bus and I kissed them goodbye. She thought it might be
the last time she saw me.”
Helen Tonk,
from the east Midlands, said Tui had flown her family and hundreds of others
into a “living nightmare” in a flight that landed in Rhodes just before 11pm on
Saturday.
Tonk was
told when they landed that their hotel in the south-eastern village of Gennadi
had been evacuated and that she, her husband and daughters aged 15, 21 and 22,
would instead have to sleep in a school sports hall, which had been turned into
an emergency refuge centre in the city of Rhodes.
“We
shouldn’t be here in a million years,” she said. “It’s one thing being here
already and being caught in the chaos – and we’ve been talking to families who
have had to flee and there was just panic and chaos – but then we’ve added to
the problem by effectively being dropped into it. Our plane should have come
over empty and should have been bringing people back.”
Tourists in
the back of a lorry being evacuated.
Tourists in
the back of a lorry being evacuated. Photograph: Eurokinissi/AFP/Getty Images
She praised
local people for providing food and support to those stranded but said her
family and dozens of others had been “completely abandoned” by their holiday
companies.
“We are
adding to the problem. We’ve been completely abandoned. Abandoned is the word I
would use, and we just don’t know what our options are.”
She added:
“In my mind I don’t see how you could say this is an act of God because we
weren’t already here. They [Tui] have chosen to bring us here. They’ve read the
situation locally wrong and we should not be here.”
Another
woman, Sharon Richards, described how her family were told to flee their hotel
in Lardos, on the fire-ravaged south-east of the island, on Saturday night.
Richards,
from Glasgow, said her family, including a nine-year-old boy and girls aged 11
and 17, and dozens of other British guests had been let down by UK travel
companies.
Tourists
from other countries had been evacuated but Jet2 and Tui had failed to provide
any proper information to those on the ground.
She said:
“We were told to leave our suitcases in our hotel and flee for the beach. The
flames were on the hillside right next to us but there’s a petrol station right
across the road from the hotel.
“We were
quite scared really, not knowing what was happening. All the Polish and
Scandinavian people in our hotel were bussed to other hotels more or less
straight away whereas us Brits were just kind of left.”
Richards,
speaking to the Guardian from an evacuation centre in the city of Rhodes, said
they eventually reached the north of the island about 10 hours after being told
to flee their hotel.
Her family,
who are on a package holiday with Jet2, are due to fly home on Monday night but
have not been told whether they will be able to collect their possessions.
A Tui
spokeswoman said: “We’re continuing to closely monitor the wildfires in Rhodes
which have led to the evacuation of a number of hotels in the south of the
island.
“We
appreciate how distressing and difficult it is for customers who have been
evacuated and ask they follow the advice of the local authorities who are
managing tourist movements in impacted areas.
“Our resort
teams are doing everything they can to support customers, working closely with
the relevant authorities.”
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