Devon family evacuated from Rhodes wild fires

Jess Bailey and her family were taken to an evacuation centre when they arrived

A woman from Devon has said it was "unbelievable" to be evacuated to a school after arriving for a family holiday on a Greek island.

Rhodes has been hit by severe wild fires that have left thousands of tourists in limbo, with hotels and roads to the airport affected.

Jess Bailey arrived with her husband and two children on Saturday night.

She says there are "hundreds and hundreds of people sleeping in classrooms and a sports stadium".

When the family arrived at the airport they were advised they could not get to their hotel because the road was cut off by the fires.

"Its quite unbelievable really. We arrived last night from Bristol, and were evacuated straight to an evacuation centre," she said.

"There were flights coming in really quite late at night from all over the place and people couldn't go to their hotels.

"They went to the sports stadium but by the time I got to the sports stadium it was full. So we were evacuated to a school nearby.

Ms Bailey said some of the evacuees had been taken to a sports stadium

"It was chaos at Rhodes airport last night. Nobody seemed to know what was going on at all. There were hundreds and hundreds of people everywhere. This morning there is nobody from Tui here. Nobody knows what is going on and it is scorchingly hot."

The six-day blaze continued on Sunday after the fire service warned more fires could break out with temperatures set to reach 45C.

Greek authorities said 19,000 people have been evacuated so far, with the Ministry of Climate Change and Civil Protection adding it was "the largest evacuation from a wildfire in the country".

Police on Rhodes said 16,000 have been evacuated by land and 3,000 by sea from 12 villages and several hotels.

Dan Jones, a sports teacher from Torquay, Devon, had to climb onto a fishing trawler with his sons on Saturday night, describing it as "the scariest moment in my entire life", adding: "What brave boys."

The family is now staying in a school classroom

Ms Bailey, a Devon County Councillor, said they had been looked after and given food and water by "amazing" volunteers.

She said communication from the travel company had been "absolutely appalling".

"The thing that really frustrates people is that we all flew out - loads of flights came out - really late at night and Tui made a decision to go ahead knowing that these fires were rampaging through the country and to hotels."

She has now reserved some flights off the island as "it was clearly a crisis".

"I'm concerned about our holiday. I've obviously spent a lot of money on it, we haven't been away for four years on any kind of holiday like this - people are really struggling to know what to do."

In response Tui said: "We're continuing to closely monitor the wildfires in Rhodes which have led to the evacuation of a number of hotels in the south of the island. "We appreciate how distressing and difficult it is for customers who have been evacuated and ask they follow the advice of the local authorities who are managing tourist movements in impacted areas. "Our resort teams are doing everything they can to support customers, working closely with the relevant authorities."We have cancelled all outbound flights to Rhodes up to and including Tuesday, and passengers due to travel on Wednesday will be offered a fee free amend to another holiday. Those customers currently in Rhodes will return on their intended flight home."The safety and well-being of our customers and teams remains our top priority."

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