Britons are stranded on boats while others have been loaded onto coaches and evacuated from their hotels after wildfires tore through the Greek islands and ‘turned the sky black with smoke’.
The popular tourist destinations of Chios and Kos have been turned into a ‘tinderbox’ after a prolonged drought and dry weather caused infernos with strong winds fanning the flames.
Two firefighters battling the blazes on the eastern Aegean islands have been injured while Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis today warned holidaymakers further blazes this summer could be ‘particularly dangerous’.
Thick plumes of black smoke have filled the sky in what one Brit described as ‘apocalyptic’ scenes with tourists being pinged emergency alerts on their phones to relocate.
Helicopters and planes have been ‘constantly’ flying overhead dumping gallons of water to combat the raging wildfires as firefighters travel on boats from the nearby island of Lesbos and Athens to tackle the flames.
Clare Smith, 38, is on holiday in Kos with her husband and nine-year-old daughter and was told coaches were making their way to her hotel located outside the resort town of Kardamena to pick them up.
Mrs Smith, from Edinburgh, told Sky News the sky being covered in smoke was like being ‘in the apocalypse, or some sort of war film’.
Lottie Westerling is on her first trip abroad with her pals and was forced to flee her hotel in Kos. They are currently ‘stranded’ on a boat in the Mediterranean Sea.
They were earlier evacuated to a beach ‘where there are police officers here’ and told to board the boats bobbing on the waters as it was too dangerous to stay standing on the sands.
But she said ‘we don’t really know if or where we are going at the moment so we are stranded on the boat’.
Talking to Sky News she described seeing orange lights in the distance getting bigger as the winds got stronger as she said: ‘It’s very bonfirey.’
Emergency services issued evacuation orders for those in the Metohi area of western Chios this morning, urging them to head to a nearby beach.
By the evening, more than 140 firefighters, along with eight teams of firefighters specialising in wildfires, seven water-dropping planes and three helicopters were fighting the blaze.
Fire department spokesman Vasilis Vathrakoyiannis said two firefighters had been ‘lightly’ injured, while dozens more firefighters were heading to Chios by boat from the nearby island of Lesbos and from Athens.
