Families left up to £10,000 out of pocket as holidays ruined by Rhodes wildfires and confusion mounts over advice which says it is still safe to travel to island… but Brits are rushed to evacuation centres as soon as they arrive

A father of two from Kent today revealed how he is £10,000 out of pocket after his family holiday to Greece was ruined by wildfires as thousands of Britons being evacuated also face missing out on any compensation.

Holidaymakers fleeing the crisis on Rhodes have described chaos and confusion as they try to get home including seeing UK tourists landing on the Greek island being immediately ushered into ‘rescue buses’ to emergency accommodation including sports halls and theatres with mattresses on the floor.

Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has warned the country is ‘at war’ as wildfires ripped through Rhodes and Corfu, as the Government in Athens put Crete on level 5 alert for today and tomorrow for wildfires amid fears it will be the next island ablaze. ‘Over the coming days and weeks, we must remain on constant alert’, he said.

Rishi Sunak has urged holidaymakers to remain in touch with tour operators before going on their holidays. But the Foreign Office has stopped short of warning against travelling to Rhodes or Corfu at this time, making it harder for anyone seeking compensation. Holidaymakers are only guaranteed compensation through travel insurance if the government advises against travel there. 

Chris Elworthy, 42, a farmer from Faversham, was due to fly with easyJet to Rhodes with his wife Emma, 43, and two children, Thomas, 13, and Charlotte, 11, on Saturday, for a holiday at a private villa in Pefkos – before both bookings were cancelled. 

The former Royal Engineers officer said easyJet was ‘not helping at all’ with a voucher or another flight and the villa is ‘refusing’ to provide a refund. ‘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 told the PA news agency.

‘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.’ 

EasyJet has been contacted for comment. Most major airlines and holiday companies will continue to fly there until they close the airport, although Tui today announced it had cancelled all flights up to Friday. Some Brits have described landing for their summer break only to be sent straight to a local school or theatre instead of their hotels.

Paul Charles, chief executive of travel consultancy The PC Agency, told Sky News: ‘Fundamentally I think the Foreign Office should have changed its advice on Saturday to say we advise against travel for this short period.

‘That would have then given a clear line of communication to airlines, to tour operators – don’t fly anymore people in, you’ll be able to give them a refund or they’ll be able to claim on their travel insurance. And this is the piece that’s missing – this is why there is so much confusion about whether you’ll get your money back or not, because the Foreign Office have not given that clear signal that in fact you shouldn’t need to travel over these few days.’

Have you been affected by the fires in Rhodes or Corfu?  E-mail: [email protected]

Kelly Squirrell and her family were staying at a hotel in Kiotari, close to one of the biggest fires. They were evacuated when ash started falling into the pool and they then ‘saw the flames’ approaching. They had to walk for six miles to safety in near 40C heat.

She has blasted easyJet, accusing them of going missing, and said: ‘I am absolutely disgusted, I worked in travel myself. No support whatsoever. I want an explanation. Where are they?’ She said that easyJet is still operating flights where passengers are being ‘ushered into rescue buses as soon as they arrived’.

Helen Tonks, a mother-of-six from Cheshire, said she was flown into a ‘living nightmare’ by Tui at 11pm on Saturday and discovered her hotel had been closed. She said: ‘We landed and were told, ‘Sorry, you can’t go to your hotel – it’s burned down’. We had no idea the fires were this bad or as close to the hotels as they were. Tui said nothing, not even when our flight was delayed. Even the captain’s chat on the plane was upbeat. We would never have come if we had known’.

Jason Robinson said his group spent £6,000 per person for a Greek holiday only to be taken straight to a local school where they’re now sleeping on the floor.

He said that his plane was delayed from taking off due to the fires but when they asked if it was safe to travel to Rhodes they were assured everything was fine.

‘I think the holiday company is disgusting. They really just treated us with a complete lack of respect. The complaint, they don’t seem to be remotely interested in it,’ he told Sky.

‘Once we arrived at the airport, it was very clear that flights were still arriving from the UK. It was just incomprehensible that they allowed us to fly and that they were allowing flights to carry on afterwards.’

Rishi Sunak urged holidaymakers hit by wildfires across Greece to remain in touch with tour operators. Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to the West Midlands, the Prime Minister said: ‘The most important thing is people remain in touch with their tour operators, there are lots of flights going back and forth to be able to bring people home, and if people are in touch with their tour operators they will get the information that they need’.

Up to 10,000 Britons are estimated to be on Rhodes, with repatriation flights to rescue holidaymakers now landing back in the UK. Two flights landed in Manchester this morning and another to Birmingham followed. 11 more will arrive back in the UK by midnight tonight, although UK airlines are continuing to sell flights for immediate departure from the UK to Rhodes. EasyJet has four flights today, Jet2 three flights and BA and Ryanair one each.

Wildfires on Rhodes are out of control with more evacuations needed as the rescue of thousands of Britons from the blaze-ravaged Greek island began today and the crisis caused by Europe’s 40C-plus Cerberus heatwave spread to Corfu.

Holidaymakers have described the ‘living nightmare’ of being woken by air raid sirens and being forced to run into the sea as fires swept through forests and hills above their hotels, comparing it to a ‘disaster movie’.

‘We are in the seventh day of the fire and it hasn’t been controlled,’ Rhodes Deputy Mayor Konstantinos Taraslias told state broadcaster ERT. ‘This is really stressful for us, because it can affect other areas that are safe and operate as normal. The tourists are not able to know where the wildfires are in Rhodes. Even the Greeks can’t really understand where the wildfires are located in the island’. 

Pictures showed thousands of tourists desperately trying to flee the inferno in the past 24 hours, with many forced to abandon their belongings and sleep on beaches and hotel floors if they couldn’t get to the airport. Some families walked for miles in their flip-flops, Crocs or sandals, pulling their suitcases and carrying pool inflatables to get to safety. 

Mother-of-two Jodie, 32, and husband Matt, 35, from Manchester, described running for their lives from their hotel in Kiotari, cradling their children before jumping on a boat and abandoning their suitcases on the beach. They arrived at the Princess Andriana Resort and Spa at 1am on Saturday but shortly afterwards there was a power cut, air raid sirens and they were told to ‘run to the sea’.

She said: ‘We ran to the beach, dragging our cases and the kids. The smoke was thick and black and the heat was immense. We left the cases after a few steps and the baby’s pram. Out of the smoke a boat then turned up. We couldn’t breathe and we had towels over our mouths. My daughter was screaming ‘I don’t want to die’.’  She added: ‘People are traumatised. A woman was pushing her mum in a wheelchair and they’d lost her dad’s ashes which they’d taken to Rhodes to scatter. Another girl had family unable to get on the boats and phones weren’t charged so no idea if they were safe’.

Claire and Paul Jones, both 36 from Leicestershire, were celebrating their honeymoon on Rhodes after getting married on July 16. They travelled to the Greek island two days later on July 18, before the wildfires took hold.

Ms Jones recalled hearing about the fires on Thursday and said by Friday evening, when she and her husband were sitting outside having drinks, it ‘got really smoky at one point’ and there was ‘ash dropping out of the sky’.

On Saturday, the couple was evacuated by coach from the Village Rhodes Beach Resort in Lindian Village, near Lardos, after she said the situation went from ‘zero to 100’.

Mrs Jones, a company director, said: ‘When we woke up [on Saturday], it had pretty much gone, it was clear sky again, it didn’t smell too bad, and we thought they had gotten it under control.’

Throughout the course of the day, she recalled how it ‘got worse and worse and worse again’, and said she and her husband decided to pack up their belongings, adding the hotel announced they were being evacuated ‘within 10 minutes’ on Saturday.

‘That’s how quickly it escalates, it was literally zero to 100,’ she said.

‘By the time we got our stuff and got to reception, which was probably another 10 minutes, everybody was at reception and you could see the fires. They had come over the hill, they were halfway down the hill, and everybody was just panicking.’

Mrs Jones has said she and her husband were ‘very lucky’ as they have now managed to flee via a taxi to Faliraki in the north of the island, where they had planned to stay later in their trip.

‘I’m finding it really hard to just switch off, I can’t stop thinking about it,’ she added. ‘I keep thinking of little things, like there was a little girl on the bus screaming to her mum, ”I don’t want to die”.

‘The kids were petrified because they could see the fire, it wasn’t a nice situation.’

Fires started on Rhodes around a week ago and around 10 per cent of the holiday island is ablaze. There are now growing concerns that a similar evacuation crisis will be needed in Corfu. Giorgos Mahimaris, the mayor of North Corfu, says the fire on the island is a result of arson. Olga Kefalogianni, claims the situation in Corfu is ‘not alarming’ and nothing like on Rhodes and that tourists should still travel to both destinations.

EasyJet say they have two rescue flights totalling 421 seats on Monday and a third on Tuesday, in addition to its nine scheduled planes carrying thousands of people home. Jet2 and easyJet sent empty planes which will be used to evacuate Britons today.

A Tui spokesman said the firm has around 40,000 customers from all over Europe in Rhodes, of which 7,800 are affected by the fires.

Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell told Times Radio: ‘The best estimate of the number of British tourists on Rhodes is between 7,000 and 10,000. This is peak holiday season’. 19,000 people in total, including locals, have been evacuated from their homes or hotels.

Asked if the Government is advising people not to travel to Rhodes, Mr Mitchell told Times Radio: ‘What we’re telling people to do is to keep in touch with their tourist company, and that is the right advice. It’s important to remember that only 10% of the island is affected by these fires.

‘And therefore it is the tourist companies and the holiday experts who are best placed to give guidance on whether or not a family or individuals’ holidays are going to be ruined by these events.’ Asked if he would go on holiday there at the moment, he said: ‘I think I probably wouldn’t’. 

Airlines are continuing to fly to and from Rhodes.

Ryanair’s chief financial officer Neil Sorahan told Sky News: ‘The airports remain open, so we’re continuing to fly in there.

‘We’ve got a number of customers who are keen to come home. We have some people who still want to get down there as well.

‘So we’re continuing to fly in and out, and as long as it’s safe to do so, and as long as the airports remain open, we’ll be there.’

A British couple have told of their ‘nightmare’ time on Rhodes.

Laura and Marc Hall are celebrating their wedding anniversary while on holiday on the island and are due to fly back to the UK on Friday.

Mrs Hall told BBC Breakfast: ‘It’s been a nightmare, on Saturday night we were just having a drink and we knew that other places had been evacuated but we were just told to stand by.

‘There was ash falling in our drinks and we could just see a blaze in the distance and a load of smoke, we were told not to do anything and then all of a sudden we had alarms going off on our phone and the waiter was saying standby, shouting ‘mayday, mayday’.

‘So it was just a mad panic, we all started packing, we were just told to wait and we might have to evacuate, so we just stayed in our rooms and at 3am we get a call, we’ve got to go.’

They were take to a basketball stadium and spent the night sleeping on the floor

It comes after authorities began evacuating large swathes of the island of Corfu, which is also popular with British holidaymakers, after fires spread there on Sunday.

A British Foreign Office spokesman confirmed a Rapid Deployment Team had arrived on Rhodes to support travel operators in bringing Britons home.

Some flights out of Rhodes were delayed on Sunday night, including an easyJet flight due to arrive in Gatwick at 9pm which touched down at 11.30pm after stopping for a crew change in Milan.

A later easyJet flight landed at Gatwick at 2.23am, an hour and a half after it was due, while there were further delays amid the overnight flights from Jet2 and Tui to Nottingham, Birmingham, Stansted, Manchester and Newcastle.

Further easyJet, Jet2 and Ryanair flights from Rhodes were scheduled to arrive at Gatwick, Stansted and Bristol on Monday afternoon.

On Saturday, families fled their hotels, leaving their belongings behind, as the huge flames crawled closer, with some having to spend the night in local stadiums and schools.

Some flight operators, including Tui, continued sending tourists to the island as late as Saturday night, with one customer complaining they had been ‘abandoned’ there.

Tui has now suspended its flights to Rhodes until Tuesday, while Jet2 Holidays cancelled its trips until next Sunday.

Paramedic Raith Else told MailOnline: ‘It’s been an absolute s*** show.

‘The local Greek people have been great, but our rep has been rubbish.

‘We were ordered to walk for four miles in the blazing heat on Saturday to a beach and then left stranded for hours.’

The Jefferson family have told how hundreds of ‘fire refugees’ flooded into their hotel, the TUI Magic Life Hotel, Plimmiri, when they were forced to evacuate.

And now the stranded family – dad Michael Jefferson, daughters Olivia, 15, and Amelia, 7 and son Oscar 6, from Burconpidsen, near Hull, are planning an epic trains, planes, and automobiles journey via Cyprus and France to get home.

Mr Jefferson said: ‘We came out on holiday on Tuesday. The first two or three days were fine.

‘But on Saturday the electricity was cut as the fires got closer to the hotel.

‘Then hundreds of people from other hotels arrived as they fled from the fires.

‘Our hotel has room for 1,300. But there were 3,000 people stranded there.

‘They were forced to sleep anywhere – on the tennis court, on the sun-beds, in the gardens, everywhere.

‘On Sunday the TUI rep put on us on buses to the airport.

‘But we have been told we don’t have a flight until Tuesday.

‘We’ve been sleeping at the airport since Sunday, so we are going to make our own way home, with help from my brother Neil.

‘We’re going to get a flight to Cyprus, then another flight to Paris and then an Uber to Calais.

‘Neil is driving down from Hull and is going to get the ferry over and pick us up in Calais and take us home.

‘This will certainly be a holiday that we remember. So far the kids are fine, if a bit tired. A lot of people have had it a lot worse.’

Mother-of-six Jess Bailey arrived with her husband and two children on Saturday night to find hundreds of people in classrooms and stadiums.

She added: ‘Its quite unbelievable really. We arrived last night from Bristol, and were evacuated straight to an evacuation centre.

‘There were flights coming in really quite late at night from all over the place and people couldn’t go to their hotels.

‘It was chaos at Rhodes airport last night. Nobody seemed to know what was going on at all. There were hundreds and hundreds of people everywhere. This morning there is nobody from Tui here. Nobody knows what is going on and it is scorchingly hot.’

Ian Wakefield told Times Radio he spent the night on a school playground in Faliraki after being moved from his hotel in Pefki.

Nursery worker Vicky Morris, 34, from Cheltenham, told The Sun her four-year-old daughter Cassie Bell asked: ‘Are we going to die, Mummy?’

A British holidaymaker described apocalyptic scenes ‘like the end of the world’ as he used his rental car to rescue families from the terrifying wildfires on Rhodes.

Jonathan Lewis was on a family holiday on the island as the flames were blown towards the coast, where he was staying.

He decided to take action on Saturday as smoke began pouring onto the resort from behind a nearby mountain and ended up spending eight hours bravely ferrying people to safety.

‘People were saying ‘It’s only a bit of smoke’ and not to worry. But I thought it was more than just a little smoke,’ he said.

‘I’m not much of a fan of sunbathing anyway, so I thought I would see if I could help.’

Mr Lewis, who lives in Attleborough, Norfolk, and works for a transport firm, drove up into the mountains towards Lardos, a pretty village on the south-east of the island.

‘People were just standing in the middle of the road, not having a clue what was going on. It was like a zombie apocalypse,’ he added.

He passed beach bars in flames and families fleeing hotels and bungalows which had caught alight or were smothered in smoke.

Mr Lewis, who had been on the island for a week, picked up a family and dropped them off at a safe hotel on the other side of the mountain.

‘There were no rooms but there were seats, phones, internet and power,’ he said.

‘I saw some people getting their luggage and dropping it as they ran to the beach as the brush at the side caught fire.’

An Austrian tourist ‘burst into tears’ as he picked him up near a spot where a tourist boat had moved close to the shore to pluck people to safety.

‘He told me he had put his wife and children on the boat as he watched it disappear into the smoke that sat on the surface [of the water],’ said Mr Lewis, who described how strong winds fanned the flames.

The Army arrived two hours into his rescue mission but ‘nobody seemed to be in charge’.

‘Buses were stopping and queuing a mile down the road from where all the people were, so I kept weaving through the car parks, getting as many in the car as I could, taking them up the hill and going back,’ he said.

Mr Lewis made six round-trips between 12pm-8pm. He and his family were evacuated from their hotel at 1am on Sunday and moved to another hotel.

Previously the wildfire had been confined to the island’s mountainous centre but, aided by winds, very high temperatures and dry conditions, it spread on Saturday towards the coast on the island’s central-eastern side.

Greek authorities said 19,000 people had been evacuated, with the Ministry of Climate Change and Civil Protection adding it was ‘the largest evacuation from a wildfire in the country’.

Kevin Evans was evacuated twice with his wife and three young children, including a six-month old baby, on Saturday as the fire rapidly spread.

He said: ‘We were originally in Kiotari in a villa but were moved to Gennadi at about 2pm.

‘There were lots of people in Gennadi sent from the hotels – many in just swimsuits having been told to leave everything in the hotel.

‘As night fell, we could see the fire on the top of the hills in Kiotari. They said all the hotels were on fire.

‘About midnight the fire started moving on to our side of the hill. The alerts were going off again but not to everyone at once with some people telling us to stay put and others receiving messages to evacuate.

‘We left at midnight with the fire very big and close.’

Stranded families have told MailOnline how they were left ‘fighting for our lives’ to try and get onto boats as desperate tourists shoved children out of the way to to force themselves on board. Before and after satellite photos show the shocking effects the wildfires have had on the island.

Under red skies on Rhodes, the Greek army helped thousands of locals and holidaymakers, mainly Britons, by finding them places to sleep in schools, stadiums and leisure centres.

One family were forced to sleep in a stadium in just their swimwear after abandoning their luggage at the Olive Garden Resort in Lardos, Rhodes. Claire McNally, whose family were initially told to stay put by hotel staff despite receiving an emergency evacuation text, told The Mirror: ‘As you can imagine it’s been stressful and we’re very hot and tired, with no change of clothes, still wearing only bikinis and shorts.’ 

Many tourists had no food or water and were forced to find makeshift beds on cardboard boxes, sun loungers and even baggage carousels. Deputy mayor of Rhodes Athansios Bryinis said: ‘There is only water and some rudimentary food. We don’t have mattresses and beds.’

Government officials are said to have held emergency meetings on Sunday as they sent in a response team to help Brits out in Rhodes. Winds of up to 35mph have made it even harder for firefighters to put out the destructive blazes. With temperatures expected to hit 45C, the Ministry for Civil Protection warned of a very high risk of wildfires in almost half of Greece.

Distressed holidaymakers have been pictured anxiously staring up at the departures board as they attempt to flee the ‘apocalyptic’ island. 

The Government said on Sunday afternoon it was ‘actively monitoring the fires in Rhodes’ and is in close contact with the local authorities. The Foreign Office has deployed a Rapid Deployment Team of five staff and four British Red Cross responders who have been pictured trying to help British nationals at the airport. 

After rival airlines TUI and Jet2 cancelled flights to the island, easyJet announced two repatriation flights will be sent to Rhodes to bring more Brits back to London Gatwick today. The airline will also send another plane on Tuesday, while Ryanair has not yet announced any cancellations.

Conor Cullen, 45, said he, his wife Danielle, 41, and their two daughters, aged 11 and 13, have been left to ‘fend for themselves’. The frustrated family, who live near Belfast, were evacuated from the Princess Beach Hotel in Kiotari at 4pm on Saturday and taken to Gennadi where they joined thousands in waiting for rescue boats on the beach.

Mr Cullen, who works in business intelligence, told MailOnline: ‘When we made the decision to move Gennadi that was the big moment in the situation last night we had to take the bull by the horns. No one was coming to save us. We had to fend for ourselves.’

His wife Danielle, a hairdresser, added: ‘When you’re watching a movie and you just think that’s never gonna happen. Last night showed these things happen and we really were fighting for our lives trying to get on the boat.’ 

Mr Cullen said the situation at the beach was ‘like something out a movie’. He added: ‘You might assume with young kids that people were more accepting but they weren’t. Everyone had their own situation and tried to force themselves on. 

‘They were shoving kids out the way. It felt like we were going to have to get physical. We were very fortunate that a boat stopped in front of us. Then there was a sick lady who had passed out in front of us but others still tried to shove themselves on.’

The family, who arrived in Rhodes on July 15, were able to get a three-hour boat up to Afantou before getting a taxi to Stegna Beach where they will wait until their flight home to Belfast on Tuesday. After fleeing their hotel, they have been left with two small bags and their passports.

Lowri Jones, from Crymych, Pembrokeshire, Wales, described scenes of ‘chaos’ at the airport. She told The Independent: ‘It was absolute pandemonium at the airport, with long queues of people trying to find out what coach they were.’