Thousands in Greece and Turkey evacuate as winds and heat fan wildfires

Czech firefighters and Italian aircraft join rescue effort in Greece, and firefighter among those killed in Turkey

The authorities were also battling flare-ups on the islands of Evia and Crete. In all of the stricken areas residents received messages to evacuate.

Several regions were placed under a red category 5 alert, the highest on the national scale, because of conditions exacerbated by the extreme weather that had turned terrain to tinder.

The National Observatory in Athens recorded a temperature of 45.8C (114.5F) in Messinia on Friday. On Saturday, the temperature reached 45.2C (113.4F) in Amfilochia, western Greece.

By late Sunday, as Czech firefighters and Italian water-bombers joined emergency teams in Greece, the focus turned to Kythera.

Describing the destruction as “incalculable”, the public broadcaster ERT reported: “The first images are resonant of a biblical disaster as huge areas have been reduced to cinders and ash.”

The island’s deputy mayor, Giorgos Komninos, was cited as saying: “Everything, from houses, beehives [to] olive trees has been burnt.”

Two teams of forest commandos, 67 firefighters and scores of volunteers backed by 22 fire brigade trucks, three helicopters and two planes were struggling to douse flames that had ripped through prime agricultural and forest land on the island fuelled by gale-force winds.

As flames approached, villagers were ordered to evacuate to safer areas, with 139 people, including tourists who were trapped on a beach, being rescued by the coast guard.

The meteorologist Panagiotis Yiannopoulos told ERT: “We are expecting the winds to get stronger right over Kythera and Crete, winds of six-beaufort strength from this evening until Tuesday evening, so a lot of very strong wind over many hours.”

In Turkey, where a record temperature of 50.5 C was registered in the province of Şirnak, in the south-east – surpassing a previous heat record of 49.5C in August 2023 – more than 1,700 people were forced to flee their homes after wildfires barrelled towards Bursa, the country’s fourth-largest city. Orhan Saribal, an opposition parliamentarian, described the scene as “an apocalypse”.

More than 1,100 firefighters were battling the flames, with authorities saying that at least 76 blazes had broken out within a 24-hour period. Turkey has been hit by numerous heat-induced infernos for weeks.

On Sunday, Bursa’s mayor said a firefighter had died of a heart attack on the job, bringing the death toll to 14. Ten of the victims were rescue volunteers and forestry workers killed on Wednesday in a fire in the west of the country.

Dozens of fires were also reported in Albania over the weekend, where thousands were forced to evacuate homes in the southern town of Delvina.

Cover photo:  Helicopter crews try to control hotspots in Kryoneri. Photograph: Yannis Kolesidis/EPA