Fire in Rhodes Under Control as Greece Continues to Fight Extreme Heat - Photos, Videos
09:08 GMT 02.08.2021 (Updated: 10:07 GMT 02.08.2021)
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MOSCOW (Sputnik) - A large forest fire in the Greek island of Rhodes was taken under control early Monday morning, as the country continues to struggle with extreme temperatures and intense fires.
"Since the early morning hours, the fire that started on Sunday, in the Island of Rhodes has been controlled after an ‘all night’ battle with the fire of all emergency services of the Island. The first and foremost priority since the beginning of the fire was to protect human lives and that's why we took precautionary measures and we evacuated local villages, protecting those people from any potential danger, the fire could cause. At this stage, the aerial firefighting equipment which includes aircraft and helicopters have intensified their efforts to fully control the fire front," according to a release by the South Aegean Region Administration.
Please keep Greece in your prayers. Over the last 2 days, there are over 100 ongoing fires and one of them is occurring in my island, Rhodes. We had a blackout for over 6h, and some areas still have power and water outage. Forests are burning, villages are being evacuated... pic.twitter.com/hjPnfSGAEP
— dina 🌕🎮 dks1 (@l__chateau) August 2, 2021
#Rhodes seems to be calmer today. The smoke and ash cloud from Turkey seems to have blown away too. Not that everything is fine, but I hear the fire here is almost under control. pic.twitter.com/ICY6r3xmw1
— Manuel Barcia 😷 (@mbarcia24) August 2, 2021
Along with its neighbours Turkey and Italy, Greece is struggling these days with many forest fires due to the intense heatwave that hits the southeast Mediterranean region.
this breaks my heart :( left rhodes tonight, an hour after the fire started and this is what we saw from the plane #φωτια_ροδος #φωτια pic.twitter.com/anCdTXFIjg
— sanne 🦋 (@lLLBEOKAYCV) August 2, 2021
During the weekend, in less than 48 hours there were 116 new forest fire fronts of different intensity throughout Greece, according to the Deputy Minister for Civil Protection and Crisis Management Nikos Hardalias. Multiple houses were burned in Achaea Prefecture in the Peloponnese on Saturday. As of now, the disaster has been put under control in the area.
