Authorities have evacuated some 2,500 people from the Greek island of Corfu as fires ravage the island. This comes after tens of thousands fled the island of Rhodes in an unprecedented operation amid a massive heat wave.<\/p>\n
Greek authorities<\/a>\u00a0brought nearly 2,500 people on\u00a0the Greek island of Corfu\u00a0to safety on Monday as forest fires blazed\u00a0during a major heat wave.<\/a><\/p>\n The evacuation took place\u00a0as firefighting crews across Greece worked to contain 82 wildfires, including 64 that began on Sunday, which has been the hottest day in the country so far this year.<\/p>\n Temperatures in Greece in the past week have gone over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in many regions, with more hot weather forecast for the coming days.<\/p>\n Huge evacuation operations A spokesman for the fire department on Corfu, Yannis Artopios, told the AFP news agency that fires were ablaze in the north of the island.<\/p>\n He said 2,466 people had been evacuated between Sunday and Monday, but\u00a0no houses or hotels had been destroyed so far.<\/p>\n Rhodes and Corfu are among Greece’s top tourist destinations and are particularly popular with visitors from\u00a0Britain and Germany.<\/p>\n The German government said Monday it would hold a crisis meeting to discuss how to help German holiday makers on Rhodes.<\/p>\n A Foreign Ministry spokesperson said the meeting would allow the German government\u00a0to “coordinate with our colleagues on the ground and then decide on possible further measures.”<\/p>\n An Interior Ministry spokesperson said that German federal police and firefighters were already helping Greek authorities transport people back to the mainland.<\/p>\n More regions on Rhodes were evacuated on Monday amid the ongoing blazes.<\/p>\n High fire danger Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday\u00a0that his country was “at war” with the wildfires and blamed climate change for the extreme nature of the disasters.<\/p>\n “Over the coming days and weeks, we must remain on constant alert,” he said in remarks in a parliamentary debate broadcast on state radio.<\/p>\n Mitsotakis thanked people involved in recent firefighting efforts and attributed the lack of casualties to the efforts of emergency services.<\/p>\n Greece is highly prone to deadly\u00a0forest fires in the summer months.<\/p>\n However, scientists say that\u00a0climate change<\/a>\u00a0driven by human-made greenhouse gas pollution is contributing to heat and drought in many\u00a0southern European countries, creating tinderbox conditions.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Authorities have evacuated some 2,500 people from the Greek island of Corfu as fires ravage the island. This comes after tens of thousands fled the island of Rhodes in an unprecedented operation amid a massive heat wave. Greek authorities\u00a0brought nearly 2,500 people on\u00a0the Greek island of Corfu\u00a0to safety on Monday as forest fires blazed\u00a0during a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7773,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7772"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7776,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7772\/revisions\/7776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>The operation on Corfu comes after some 19,000 people were evacuated from several locations on the island of Rhodes in what was described by police as\u00a0the biggest fire evacuation ever in Greece.<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>A wildfire was also reported on the island of Evia, the north of which\u00a0was devastated by blazes in August 2021.<\/a>\u00a0Residents in four southern villages were told to evacuate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n