'Coming Back From Near-Death Experience': UK Tourists Share Their Survival Stories From Greece's Rhodes Fire
UK tourists, who were stuck in Greece's Rhodes in the fire and survived, have shared their near encounter with death. Read them below.
Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes and hotels at the weekend after a large wildfire tore through the Greek island of Rhodes. The survivors shared their stories and narrated their 'near-death experiences.' 56-year-old IT project Manager Dean Mason from Rothley in Leicestershire while talking about his “near-death experience” to the Guardian said, “It was my granddaughter’s first holiday abroad. By Tuesday morning, we could see large plumes of smoke coming up from the centre of the island. We were led to believe everything was under control. Nobody seemed particularly concerned. On Friday evening it was getting quite bad, there were bits of ash falling on us, but we were again assured by the hotel everything was OK. We spent Saturday morning in the pool. It was nice and very hot, and a lot windier than on previous days."
The Guardian quoted him as saying, “By 11:30 am on Saturday I could see very large plumes of smoke suddenly looking not a million miles away from where we were. People started to look at one another. Not long after that, you could see the sky was starting to fill with smoke. Within five minutes, I could see flames on the hillside around us. Then the hotel alarm went off.”
Upon hearing the alarm, the family rushed back to their room to pack some hand luggage and grab their passports before fleeing to the beach, as per the Guardian.
Mason said, “There was just a lot of hotel staff going ‘Get out, get out.’ There was a complete lack of any structured support. There was a lot of hysteria. You were being coated in ash, the sun was completely covered by yellow smoke,” as reported by the Guardian.
The family got split up as the locals there took them to two different nearby communities on boats before they were finally reunited a few hours later following which they were dropped in the centre of Lindos.
“There were just hundreds of coaches and thousands of people just desperate to go somewhere. It felt like the end of days,” Mason said.
Eventually, the family were able to secure seats on a plane back to the UK. He added about the experience upon reaching back and said, “We got back to Birmingham early Sunday morning. Being asked to fill in a questionnaire [by a travel rep] after this near-death experience wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear. Our belongings are still at the hotel, but I think we were incredibly fortunate to get out of there,” Guardian reported.
Another survivor shared his experience with the Guardian regarding this horrific incident. 33-year-old Adam Walker, a business analyst from Telford, flew to Rhodes for a family holiday on Friday night along with his wife, mother-in-law and two young children. He reached the popular beach resort of Pefkos on the east coast of the island. While talking about his experience said, “We arrived at 2 am on Saturday. When we were in the pool that afternoon we could see smoke in the distance, and a red glow on top of the hill. There was ash falling on us during dinner. At midnight on Saturday, we were told by text message to leave our hotel and move to the beach. It was absolute chaos. There was mixed messaging about whether to take bags or not. After about half an hour we were told to walk about half a kilometre to the top of the hill with our bags, but there was no information from anyone about where we were going. Everyone was upset as they were trying to figure out where to send people as it was happening.”
He then said that the buses came and took scores of holidaymakers to Greece's Rhodes Town. He added, “We were left at a school, where we got our towels and clothes out and lay on tiles. There were power cuts and at times no running water, with toilets overflowing.”
Walked expressed his disappointment over the fact that there was no direct support or communication from his travel operator during the evacuation. He said, “There were no representatives anywhere. We were helped by local Greek volunteers, and lots of students turned up at some point. There wasn’t much sleeping going on.”
As per him, his family had no idea there were fires engulfing the area before they set off from the UK. Guardian quoted him as saying, “We hadn’t seen it at all on the news. It all kicked off properly the day we landed.”
As per the Guardian's report, the family spent the whole day at the school and were told on Sunday evening that they would soon be able to board a plane and go back to the UK free of charge.
He said, “At some point on Sunday, people were told they could go back to the resort [by the travel operator], which some people did before being evacuated again. We didn’t know where the flights were going in the UK, and were asked to put down a preference for where we wanted to go.”
The family arrived back in Birmingham on Monday morning, with some of their belongings still at their hotel in Pefkos.
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