A tourist visiting Rhodes has said she thought she and her partner were going to die in the wildfires.
Libby Robb, from Bexhill-on-Sea, East Sussex, and her partner Josh were celebrating their 21st birthdays on the Greek island when they were forced to evacuate their hotel in Kiotari.
“We were just walking cluelessly. We didn’t know where we were going,” she told BBC Radio Sussex.
Meanwhile, a father from Faversham, Kent, said he was left £10,000 out of pocket after his family holiday was cancelled.
Greece says it has launched the biggest rescue of its kind in response to the wildfires, which have forced 19,000 people to leave their homes.
The fire looked like it was clearing up, but “out of nowhere a massive black cloud came over and everyone just started running,” said Ms Robb.
She and her partner were told they would be collected by a coach to be taken to a safe place, but all the coaches quickly filled up.
“They said more coaches were coming but none were turning up,” said Ms Robb.
“One dropped people off and drove off while we could see the fire coming over the hill towards us.
“We felt like we’d been abandoned and had just been left to die.”
Eventually Ms Robb and her partner made it to another hotel where they had to sleep on sun lounger cushions on the floor of the foyer for two nights.
From there, they got a taxi to the airport and were due to return on a repatriation flight to Gatwick on Monday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Chris Elworthy, 42, was supposed to fly with easyJet to Rhodes on Saturday with his wife Emma, 43, and children, Thomas, 13, and Charlotte, 11, to reach a private villa in Pefkos – but both bookings were cancelled.
“We are now £10,000 out of pocket; easyJet is not helping at all with a flight, despite having promised on Twitter that they would provide a voucher or another flight – 24 hours later they have done nothing,” he said.
“The villa is refusing to refund us, and the holiday insurance is saying that we’re not covered because we didn’t have the additional natural disaster cover on top of the ordinary cover.”
The airline has been contacted for comment.
Source: BBC
