After a week of wildfires, the coastline in Kiotari on Rhodes Island in Greece has been drastically damaged (Picture: Getty)
Satellite images have shown the devastating scale of how badly torched Greece has been after a week of wildfires.
Tens of thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes and abandon holidays on Greek islands including Rhodes and Corfu as the fires spread across the region.
In Rhodes a black scar has been scorched across the middle of the island to the southern town of Kiotari.
Today the fires reached the outskirts of Athens as gusts of winds caused flare up disrupting traffic and rail services.
The fires have raged across parts of the country during three successive Mediterranean heatwaves over two weeks, leaving five people dead, including two firefighting pilots, and triggering a huge evacuation of tourists.
The fires have been burning since last week on Rhodes, where temperatures have reached 45C, and the whole island has been put into a state of emergency.
Near the central city of Volos, a wildfire burned on two fronts, forcing a section of Greece’s busiest motorway to shut for several hours, while national rail services passing through the area were delayed.
The Kiotari coastline has been badly hit by the wildfires (Picture: Getty)
Firefighters also battled flames on Rhodes for a 10th successive day, while flare-ups were reported on the island of Evia.
Wildfire carbon emissions for July in Greece were the highest by a huge margin – totalling over one metric megaton and doubling the previous record – since records started 20 years ago, according to the European Union agency that analyses satellite data, the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service.
Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at the agency said: ‘Unfortunately, it is not all that surprising, given the extreme conditions in the region.
‘The observed intensity and estimated emissions show how unusual the scale of the fires have been for July relative to the last 20 years of data.’
In Athens, at a ceremony held at the defence ministry, senior members of the armed forces paid tribute to the two pilots killed in a firefighting plane crash this week.
Captain Christos Moulas and Lieutenant Pericles Stephanidis died during a low-altitude water drop on the island of Evia.
Defence minister Nikos Dendias said the operators showed ‘self-denial in the line of duty’.
‘Greece today is in mourning. Their memories will live on,’ he said.
Funeral services for the two airmen will be held in northern Greece later on Thursday and on the island of Crete on Friday.
More than 20,000 people have fled the flames on the island since the weekend, Greece’s largest-ever wildfire evacuation.
Some 16,000 people have been transported across land and another 3,000 evacuated by sea, police say. Others have had to leave by road or use their own transport.
They include thousands of tourists who had to make for temporary shelters like sports stadiums before getting the emergency planes laid on by travel companies.
But with Greece in the middle of a long spell of extreme heat that has increased the risk of wildfires across the country, Rhodes is not the only place that has been affected.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis says the country is ‘at war’ with the wildfires and warns it faces ‘another three difficult days ahead’ before temperatures are expected to drop.
Homes have been ravaged by the fires (Picture: Google / Getty)
The Civil Protection Ministry warned of an ‘extreme danger’ of fire in six of the country’s 13 regions on Wednesday.
Civil protection minister Vassilis Kikilia says fire crews have been fighting more than 500 fires across the country over the past 12 days – including in Midea on the mainland.
On Wednesday night, citizens in areas around the central Greek cities of Volos and Lamia threatened by new outbreaks of wildfires were told to move to safety.
The situation would have been ‘virtually impossible’ without human-induced climate change, scientists say, adding it has made the heatwave in Europe 2.5C hotter.
More than 40 people have died in Algeria, Italy and Greece as result of the fires – the majority, 34, in Algeria.
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Satellite images show the scale of how badly torched Greece has been after a week of wildfires.
