Rhodes fires: 'It was the most terrifying thing I have been through'

A woman in Rhodes has described her experience of escaping the wildfires with her family as "horrific".

Kaz was on holiday with her husband Jon, eight-year-old daughter Lily and parents when the flames approached.

She described people trying to block evacuation coaches, being forced to cling on to the side of a boat and sleeping in a school hall.

A lack of information or reps made the situation even scarier, but locals helped her out with gifts, she said.

The Greek island has been battling fires fanned by strong winds since Tuesday after a heatwave saw temperatures in excess of 40C (104F).

As columns of smoke covered the sky and ash began to fall "like snow" on Saturday, Kaz - from Leicester - got an alert on her phone telling her to evacuate - but said she was told to stay by staff at the hotel in Kiotari.

Shortly afterwards, a banging on the bedroom door started a grim series of events.

"It was horrific," she told BBC Radio Leicester. "It was just the most terrifying thing I have ever been through.

"Someone said 'get out, get out, fire, fire', and we had to abandon our luggage.

"We went to the coaches outside and it was just people screaming and shouting - the children were terrified.

"But we were lucky - there were people running in front of the coaches, screaming at them to stop."

They were dropped off at the nearby Gennadi beach in the early afternoon but their situation had hardly improved.

"It was 40 degrees," she said. "The Red Cross brought us water but as it got dark, with no electricity, the panic started to pick up again.

"The locals were just saying 'get out of here', and you could see the red on the horizon as the flames started coming again.

"There were thousands of people there with no idea what was going on."

Boats arrived at around midnight to move people off the beach but this prompted another rush.

"In the dark I was separated from my family so it was just me and my daughter," she said.

"We got on to a boat but had to cling on to stop falling in, but my daughter sang songs to keep my spirits up."

Kaz was reunited with her family later that night but ended up sleeping in a school hall in Rhodes itself.

"We have got nothing. The locals, who are being impacted the most by this, have been so kind," she said.

"They have given us toothbrushes and flip flops but all we want is to go home, but we have been told nothing about when that might happen.

"Jet2 tell us to follow local guidance, the local people tell us to talk to our airline."

They were hoping to board a repatriation flight on Monday night.

A newly-wed couple, from Leicestershire, who were celebrating their honeymoon in Rhodes, have also spoken of their "traumatic" experience.

Claire Jones, 36, and her husband Paul, also 36, were on the island after getting married on 16 July.

On Saturday, the couple were evacuated by coach from the Village Rhodes Beach Resort in Lindian Village, near Lardos, after Mrs Jones said the situation went from "zero to 100".

Mrs Jones has said she and her husband were "very lucky" as they have now managed to flee via a taxi to Faliraki in the north of the island, where they had planned to stay later in their trip.

She said: "I keep thinking of little things, like there was a little girl on the bus screaming to her mum, 'I don't want to die'."

While waiting for the coaches to arrive, Mrs Jones said: "When we got to the car park and you could see the fires getting closer and closer and closer, and the coaches weren't turning up... that was really worrying.

"It was really quite traumatic driving to where we went because you could see everyone fleeing their hotels, and people were walking along the beaches, walking along the roads, and they had babies and small children."

British evacuees have begun to arrive back in the UK from Rhodes and Corfu. An EasyJet flight from Corfu touched down at Gatwick just after 14:00 BST on Monday.

Katie Lewis, 28, from Nottingham, said she cut her holiday in Corfu short and flew back because of the fires.

"It was like an apocalypse," she said.

"We've seen what's happened in Rhodes the last few days and we didn't want to get stranded out there."

A spokesperson for Jet2 said over the weekend that it had "put on four repatriation flights to bring our customers home, which is on top of our scheduled programme of flights that will continue to operate from Rhodes to the UK this week".

"We are continuing to make decisions in the best interests of our customers, and we are keeping everything under constant review," they added.

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