‘We are at war’: More evacuations as Greece battles wildfires

Thousands of people have been evacuated from the Greek islands of Rhodes and Corfu as Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared that the Mediterranean nation was at war with wildfires raging across the country.

On the resort island of Rhodes, one of Greece’s leading holiday destinations, the flames remained out of control for a seventh day, forcing hundreds of people to flee their homes and hotels, according to a fire brigade spokesperson.The latest evacuations were ordered after 19,000 people, mostly tourists, were moved in buses and boats over the weekend out of the path of the fire that reached several coastal areas from nearby mountains.On the western Ionian tourist island of Corfu, about 2,400 visitors and locals were also relocated as a precautionary measure from Sunday into Monday. Evacuations were reported on the island of Evia and in a mountainous area in the southern Peloponnese region.

“For the next few weeks, we must be on constant alert. We are at war,” the Greek prime minister told parliament. “We will rebuild what we lost, we will compensate those who were hurt… The climate crisis is already here. It will manifest itself everywhere in the Mediterranean with greater disasters,” he said.

He warned that the nation faced “another three difficult days ahead” before high temperatures are forecast to ease.‘I have nothing’
Help continued to arrive from the European Union and elsewhere, with firefighting planes from neighbouring Turkey joining the effort on Rhodes, where 10 water-dropping planes and 10 helicopters buzzed over flames up to 5 meters (16 feet) tall despite low visibility.Al Jazeera’s Stefanie Dekker, reporting from the resort of Kiotari in south Rhodes, said the inferno was moving faster than firefighters could contain it, due to winds gusting up to 50km per hour (31mph).

“The firefighters say there’s very little they can do with these extremely heavy winds. And while the world has been focusing a lot on the tourists evacuated from this island, it’s the locals who remain. There is real desperation here about how much they have lost and what’s happening to their island,” Dekker said.

“Many volunteers have joined the fire-fighting effort but we are told that are simply not enough crews on the roads.”

One Rhodes resident, standing at the side of a street as the fires raged across the horizon, told Al Jazeera the flames had taken her house.

“I have nothing,” said Katerina, who only gave her first name. “There goes my house. There go my animals.”