Greek holiday wildfires nightmare: ‘My husband uses a wheelchair – we had to say our goodbyes’
When the order came to “run”, Steve Nichols, a wheelchair user, said goodbye to his wife and daughter.
Fires were roaring closer to the Atlantica Dream Resort, a five-star hotel on the island of Rhodes.
Representatives from Tui had first told Steve, 56, Annetta, 51 and their daughter Charlotte, 15, that they were “safe” on their holiday.
But chaos broke out as the blaze lept closer and closer on Saturday night, and in the panic Tui staff initially said they were not able to find Mr Nichols a wheelchair.
“They were saying ‘don’t take anything, run, run, run’ and we had to go immediately,” Annetta told The Telegraph.
“At one point my husband actually said if you can’t get a wheelchair, you leave me here and you go. We effectively had to say our goodbyes.”
Just in time, a Tui staff member found an old wheelchair with “flat tyres” from the hotel basement, Annetta said.
Having to say goodbye to her husband, who was diagnosed with Hepatitis C in 1991 after being caught up in the infected blood scandal, was “extremely distressing”, she added.
“There were arguments beyond belief, people shouting and screaming, there were people passed out on the roadside. Nobody knew what to do. We were initially told we were ‘safe, don’t worry’ and to enjoy the holiday.”
The Nichols family were among thousands of British holidaymakers caught in the chaos of what has become the largest evacuation operation in Greek history.
Nearly 20,000 people, many of them tourists, are being evacuated, as the wildfires sweep down from the mountains towards Rhode’s south western coastal resorts.
Witnesses described scenes that resembled those on the stricken Titanic cruise liner, with orders for women and children to be saved first ignored while people fought one another to save their own luggage.
Some families were split up in the mayhem. Others were forced to walk tens of miles for safety, or hitch lifts of trucks driven by local volunteers, as rescue buses and boats filled up within minutes.
The Nichols family slept in a school before moving to a leisure centre and finally into new accommodation, where they will stay until their flight at the end of the week.
On Monday, Andrew Mitchel, a Foreign Office minister, said that as many as 10,000 Britons were in Rhodes as holiday firms promised repatriation flights to bring them home.
Amid the chaos, Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis declared “war” on the wildfires ravaging the island, as he warned of at least three more “difficult days”.
Since the weekend, thousands of stranded Britons have been forced to sleep on the floors of sports halls, conference centres, hotels and the local airport.
John and Kay Hope realised something was seriously wrong when wild horses galloped past their beachfront hotel.
The Bolton couple lost each other in the commotion. Kay, 35, walked 10 miles to safety, while her husband, 48, desperately tried to flag down a pleasure boat to take him to safety.
“There were leisure boats and people were waving at them to help,” he said. “They all started coming, took the women and children first. There were men trying to come on with cases, and they said ‘it’s either life or luggage, you are not coming on with cases’.
“The smoke was so far out to sea you still needed a T-shirt over your face to breathe half an hour out. We then hooked up with a bigger boat and it was like walking the plank trying to get on it.”
Nicola Barlett experienced similar struggles when rescue efforts descended into a mad scramble for the last remaining seats on board a departing coach.
“It was like the Titanic,” the 34-year-old mother said.
“It’s family and children first, but everyone was just barging into the coaches. They didn’t care about families, and kids were screaming to their parents ‘I don’t want to die’.”
Alexandra Roscacha, who had travelled to Rhodes from Dublin with her friend Mateusz Besztak, described how people refused to leave their luggage behind, taking up seats on the coaches put on to take them to safety.
“We were very lucky to get away,” Alexandra said. “It was very chaotic. It was like a free-for-all - they didn’t care that they weren’t supposed to bring big luggage, they were putting them on the seats where people could have been sitting on their way to get evacuated.”
Fires had raged in Rhode’s interior since last Tuesday, but high winds and rising temperatures drove the island’s worst wildfires towards its popular tourist destinations.
On Monday, local authorities said the situation was “looking better”, but hundreds of firefighters were deployed to fight the flames, while three helicopters and four planes worked to douse them from above.
Temperatures were set to climb to 40C amid fears the wildfires could yet spread further south along the coast.
Overnight, civilians were ordered to evacuate no fewer than 17 nearby towns and villages, including Santa, Megoula, Porta, Palia, Perithia and Sinies, as the fires continued to spread.
While repatriation flights left for Britain, popular tour operators, Jet2 and Tui, came under intense criticism with holidaymakers describing how they’d been left abandoned by the firms.
Nicola and her husband Ross said Tui “didn’t tell us anything” as they were forced to flee to a nearby hotel without their luggage.
“We basically made the decision to go. At the hotel we saw the flames coming over the hill,” Ross added.
Steve Bunning, a prison officer who was holidaying with his wife, said Jet2 had left them “abandoned” when their hotel, the Lindos Imperial, was evacuated over the weekend.
“We thought we’d leg it, dumped the suitcases on a beach and got as far as we could, then got on the boat and got picked up,” he said after returning back to Britain.
“Jet2 didn’t do anything to help us, abandoned; they didn’t do anything at all. It was a shambles basically, we had to come back with Tui. I booked with Jet2 holidays but have come back with Tui; Jet2 didn’t want to know,” he added.
Anne Henry, 66, a play worker, and her husband Gary Henry, 68, a retired engineer, from Liverpool, said Jet2 had been “worse than useless” after the firm put the phone down on them during an attempt to arrange travel home.
Melani Jones, 51, a social worker, with her husband Richard, 52, who were travelling with their two teenage daughters, organised their own flights home at a cost of £550 after Easyjet did not contact them despite the airline putting on extra flights.
Repatriation flights reportedly landed in Britain half-full after a series of ground and technical issues.
Tui confirmed its flights weren’t leaving Rhodes full after its communications were hit by power outages.
Alexandra said she had arrived at London Gatwick and would have to make her own way home to Dublin.
“It was chaotic, no information at all. The flight was half-empty,” she said.
A spokesman for Jet2 acknowledged the difficulties and said the firm had sent in a “huge team of experienced colleagues” to provide support to holidaymakers on the ground.
