PHOTO: Firefighter rescued two rabbits and a cat from burning forest in Rhodes, Greece

Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that a Firefighter has rescued two rabbits and a cat from burning forest in Rhodes, Greece.

Ross Clark has written a good piece for the Spectator’s Coffee House blog pointing out that 2023 has not been an unusually bad year for forest fires in Europe and, according to Nasa satellite date, the number of forest fires globally actually fell by about 25% between 2001 and 2015. Here’s how it begins:

“Summer wouldn’t be complete without hordes of disgruntled British tourists being evacuated from their hotels, flown home early or spending their holidays sprawled on the floor of an international airport. But are the scenes of Rhodes really a symptom of a the world ‘being on fire’, as Greta Thunberg would put it?”

“Actually, in spite of scenes of burning forests on Rhodes and elsewhere being presented daily on our television screens, 2023 has not been a devastating year for forest fires in Europe. Data from the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), which covers the EU, shows that it has been an average year to date – with an early burst of fires in the spring followed by less activity since then.

“It is a similar story with wildfires globally. A 2016 study published in a Royal Society journal using Nasa satellite data surprised many people by revealing that the amount of land burned annually in wildfires globally had decreased by about a quarter between 2001 and 2015. The authors have since updated their study and confirmed that in spite of increasing agonising over fires in the US, Europe and Australia, the amount of land being burned is still falling. This data includes all wildfires, not just forests – and globally 70% of fires are on grassland rather than forests.

Tour operators flew more than 2,000 holidaymakers home as wildfires raged on the island of Rhodes in what the Greek government said was the largest evacuation ever undertaken in the country.

More repatriation flights are due today and tomorrow as the fires remained out of control and the Civil Protection authority warned the threat of further fires was high in almost every part of Greece, gripped by a heatwave.

Fires burning since Wednesday on Rhodes forced 19,000 people to leave homes and hotels over the weekend as an inferno reached coastal resorts on the island’s southeast.

A wildfire on the island of Corfu also led to the evacuation of about 2,400 visitors and locals from Corfu overnight, a fire service spokesman said, adding that the departures were a precaution. Greece has been sweltering under a lengthy spell of extreme heat that has exacerbated wildfire risk and left visitors stranded in peak tourist season.

“For the next few weeks we must be on constant alert. We are at war, we will rebuild what we lost, we will compensate those who were hurt,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told parliament.

“The climate crisis is already here, it will manifest itself everywhere in the Mediterranean with greater disasters.”

Kelly Squirrel, a transport administrator from the UK, said police had ordered people from her hotel on Rhodes to evacuate.

“We had to keep walking,” she told AFP at the international airport. “So we walked for about six hours in the heat.”

The worst and the best together species on earth is man!! Some people burn it all without considering the loss and destruction behind them.

And others become a shield of protection to every living thing out there.

Greek police on Monday arrested a man suspected of starting an ongoing wildfire near Athens fuelled by a heatwave and strong winds, firefighters said. 

“Police carried out the arrest of a foreigner who allegedly caused the fire” in Kouvaras, around 50 kilometres (30 miles) southeast of Athens, said fire service spokesman Yannis Artopios.