Poor Greece 🙁

Greece has always had wildfires although this year it seems much worse, but possibly only making repeated headlines because tourists are involved.

I know it's a shame when a holiday is ruined and you've been through a frightening experience, but as others have said, it's nothing compared to the Greeks who have lost homes and livelihoods. A friend who had a house in the countryside outside Athens lost it to a wildfire several years ago. Very traumatic.

I have just returned from Corfu , there are often fire up in the hills and the Greeks know how to handle them.
With regards to CorfuThe British media have seemed to go totally over the top and what they are saying does not not compare to what the Greeks are saying on the ground
All I will say is the Greece is 90% dependent on tourism so please don’t turn your back on the islands ..

I’m going to the Pelion mainland in September. I love Greece, it’s history, hospitality and people. It’s no surprise to see returning distressed tourists praising local people for helping them with tour reps nowhere to be seen
I was on kephalonia a couple of years ago when fires on the mountains suddenly lept roads and were surrounding our accommodation within a short time. We were in a small village on the coast so headed to the beach and the six tavernas. The fires were skilfully extinguished
Scary times in the med

The fire on Rhodes is huge, 35 square miles. It’s dreadfully sad, they must be praying for the autumn all over the Med. Not that the UK is immune, there are always moorland fires here in the summer too, it’s only a few weeks ago that 6 square miles were burnt in the Highlands. Maybe we should be grateful for our very average weather this month.

Witzend

I’ve certainly heard of fires around Athens being started deliberately. Allegedly because developers had been refused permission to build, because it would mean destroying masses of trees. So (allegedly) they’ve started fires to destroy the tree cover, in order to make that reason invalid.

This was a few years ago now - we haven’t been back since before COVID.

Yes I heard a similar thing in turkey last year . There was a forest fire about 20 minutes drive from us and the locals were saying it was started deliberately to destroy forest land in order to build hotels, villas or apartments. Thankfully there was no wind and it was contained.

I think the press has gone over the top (as usual) with regards to the situation on Rhodes. I appreciate that things are bad in the South of the island, but the North has been unaffected (apart from an influx of displaced tourists and an absence of transport). Our daughter and her family arrived there last week. They’ve had no problems, apart from a lack of local transport because buses and taxis were busy moving people away from the fires. A lovely local gave them a lift back to their hotel. 😎

The fires in Canada are still raging. Some have now crossed the border into the USA.
People are being displaced and a firefighter has lost his life.

Tenko

Witzend

I’ve certainly heard of fires around Athens being started deliberately. Allegedly because developers had been refused permission to build, because it would mean destroying masses of trees. So (allegedly) they’ve started fires to destroy the tree cover, in order to make that reason invalid.

This was a few years ago now - we haven’t been back since before COVID.

Yes I heard a similar thing in turkey last year . There was a forest fire about 20 minutes drive from us and the locals were saying it was started deliberately to destroy forest land in order to build hotels, villas or apartments. Thankfully there was no wind and it was contained.

Sadly, a lot of fires are started by human activity, either due to carelessness or deliberately.

In fairness I don’t think the situation on Rhodes was predictable when the fire was raging at its highest and was out of control. 30,000 people were evacuated, 5 people are known to have died, and it destroyed almost a tenth of the island. It’s hard to see that the media exaggerated how serious it was, and how quickly it could have spread further. People who weren’t affected were just lucky.

I’m in the north west. It’s been very wet recently so our moorlands are safe. Two years ago we had terrible moorland fires, they were deliberately started on a number of occasions. Fortunately easier to extinguish than those in Greece