Rhodes wildfire escape: ‘We grabbed our phones and passports and fled the flames’

A Jewish woman from Radlett has described the terror she and her boyfriend experienced as they fled the raging wildfires in Rhodes.

Six days into a week-long stay at the Mayia Resort hotel, outside the village of Kiotari, Jessie Weiner, a 27-year-old teacher at Kerem school and her 26-year-old boyfriend noticed ash falling from nearby fires along the coast. They spotted helicopters returning again and again to the sea to gather water to douse the looming flames.

“No one had been evacuated,” Weiner told Jewish News. “Friday was a very hot night but we thought nothing of it.”

They smelt smoke the next day but spent the morning by the pool, until around 1pm when “suddenly, the smoke smarted billowing out of the front of the hotel, in the nearby fields and land.”

The hotel did not advise guests to evacuate. Weiner says that “the message that we received was: ‘If a guest asks about it they could tell us about it’, but otherwise no one knew anything.”

It was on returning to their room, at the front of hotel, that they saw the fire.

“Just a lot, a lot of smoke and very high flames which hadn’t yet entered the area of the hotel but wasn’t far away,” recalls Weiner.

“Luckily my boyfriend said ‘let’s empty the safe and go’. We were in swimwear. He grabbed our passports, our phone charger, battery packs, a beach bag and we left. Then we suddenly got an alert on our phone from the Greek government: ‘Fire nearby, you need to evacuate’.”

The couple raced out the back of the hotel, where other guests were already running.

“Some managed to get a suitcase, some had absolutely nothing, not even a passport. They just said to exit the hotel. The staff were taking off their name tags, because they didn’t have a procedure in place, and were telling guests to go to the beach at the back of the hotel.”

Alongside families with young children, one father carrying a baby just in a nappy, with towels over their faces, the couple, wearing swimwear and sliders (flipflops), walked in 38 degree heat for two hours, across 5 or 6 miles to escape the flames, applying suncream as often as they could.

“I didn’t want to be trapped on the beach, so we just walked on the roadside. People at the airport later told us they were helped by fishermen in their boats and given refuge in schools. The locals were amazing, handing out water as we passed. They should have been evacuating themselves but were helping us, giving out towels and whatever they could.

“You could see the fire following us,” recalls Weiner, as alongside hundreds of others, they reached another hotel that appeared “far away enough from smoky danger,” and “didn’t look like it would come near to us.”

With no rooms available, the (charter airline) TUI affiliated hotel set everyone up in the main dining room, providing “food, apples, sandwiches” telling them “you’re welcome to have anything from the bar and use the facilities’.

A convoy of army trucks drew up four hours later.

“I turned to my boyfriend and said ‘we’re leaving. We need to go,” says Weiner.

“Children were screaming for their mums, as they were put on first with towels over their faces. It was horrific. We jumped onto one of the trucks. My boyfriend was one of the people who was helping all the children and parents; it didn’t fit nearly enough people and the fire was getting scarily close.

The army was going back and forth to get everyone. We were driving past thousands of people; mothers, children, men, elderly; whoever was in any of the hotels, they all were evacuating.

“A man from TUI threw a box of food onto the truck. My shoes fell off and someone helped me put them back on.

“In those situations, it seems surreal but everyone looked out for each other. We had no idea where we were going; some people had suitcases and were trying to throw them onto the trucks ahead of people. The army was going back and forth to get everyone. We were driving past thousands of people; mothers, children, men, elderly; whoever was in any of the hotels, they all were evacuating.”

They were moved onto a second hotel, another 40 minutes away whilst Jessie took photos because she realised “no-one is going to realise how crazy this journey has been.”

Thousands turned up, some with possessions, while “others, like us had absolutely nothing.”

Exhausted and resting by the pool, they once again saw the fire.

“We’d just escaped it, and it was there again,” says Weiner. It was “very, very scary to see.”

Then “the coaches started coming less. The army trucks didn’t come back; they were driving all the way back in to the fires.

“We felt quite desperate, sitting on the hard floor for much of the night. I saw the flames; locals were saying the roads were closed. Police were not letting anyone pass. We felt quite trapped. Then they started turning away coaches because there was no room.”

I was crying when we touched down in the UK. We are so lucky to be home, I can’t tell you.

Eventually, at 2am, they managed to get on a coach heading for the airport, but only by confirming they had flights booked to get home.

“We didn’t say a word. We stayed quiet,” says Weiner. Two hours later, they reached the airport to find people sleeping on the floors.

“We were hearing that hotels were being burnt down. Our hotel remained standing. People stayed behind to build a barricade to obstruct the fire, but there’s obviously a lot of debris and smoke damage.”

Jessie and her boyfriend waited at the airport for around 15 hours.

“We met a lot of people on the way, some with very small families, a lot of couples, people on their honeymoon. It was a bit crazy. We saw people who’d got on boats, some who locals had let them stay in their villages. It was very unsettling to hear.”

Weiner told Jewish News that people were “crying, throwing up and passing out from the heat.”

“Everyone was just so thankful to be on the flight. I was crying when we touched down in the UK. We are so lucky to be home, I can’t tell you.”