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SHOCKING before and after footage shows how a luxury hotel was torched by the wildfires blazing through the Greek island of Rhodes.
The sprawling four-star Sun Princess hotel in Kiotari turned into a blackened shell of its former glory as the fires laid waste to it over the weekend.
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Last week, the coastal hotel was sparkling in the sunlight and filled to the brim with holidaymakers relaxing by its pools or at the beach.
It boasted a spa, three swimming pools and 214 newly revamped rooms and described itself as a hotel that: “welcomes guests in a warm and friendly ambience, ideal for families and couples”.
Today, it is a charred wasteland – burnt and distorted by the out of control wildfires that swept down from the mountains over the weekend and stormed across the island.
Its haunting empty remains show melted furniture, a scorched playground, collapsed hotel roofs and hastily discarded luggage.
Its guests had fled in a hurry when the sky above Kiotari filled with ash and smoke on Saturday afternoon and they began to feel the heat of the approaching blaze.
The fires made it down to the hotel’s beach where they destroyed its beach-side structures, sun loungers and left burnt sand in its wake.
The hotel’s entrance sign is charred to the extent it is unreadable.
Some of the hotel’s rooms survived, while masses of the public areas and buildings were destroyed in the blaze.
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In Rhodes, more than 16,000 people were evacuated by land and 3,000 by sea from 12 villages and several hotels over the weekend in the largest evacuation effort Greece has ever seen.
Terrified holidaymakers were forced to flee burning hotels, wade through water and sleep in makeshift camps on the floors of schools and gyms.
Foreign Office minister Andrew Mitchell said up to 10,000 British tourists were stranded on the island yesterday, many of whom were facing a “living nightmare”.
Around 450 firefighters and seven planes have arrived from the EU to help tackle the dozens of fires while neighbouring Turkey sent 10 water-dropping planes and 10 helicopters to join the efforts.
Mercy flights finally began to bring them home yesterday — with more expected today.
A Rapid Deployment Team from the Foreign Office is on the ground as Brits head to the airport in a desperate bid to get a flight.
Those lucky enough to get home on mercy flights described the rescue effort as a “free-for-all” as they landed at Gatwick.
But furious holidaymakers have slammed airlines and travel firms for flying them to Rhodes in the first place.
Today, tourists have also been told to evacuate Agioi Theodoroi and parts of Evia, Greece’s second-largest island, after forest fires erupted in the areas.
Wildfires are also raging on the island of Corfu, while tourists have been warned of an “extreme fire risk” in Crete and now the Spanish island of Majorca.
And in the popular Italian island of Sicily, Palermo airport was forced to close today due to fires burning dangerously close to its runways.
The airport in the Sicilian capital was forced to shut until 11am local time, its operator said on Twitter, as firefighters worked to put out a major blaze.
Meanwhile, tourists got off a flight to Rhodes after the pilot warned them it was a “terrible idea” to travel there.
The plane was just about to take off from Gatwick when the easyJet captain urged the 37 British holidaymakers on board to think twice about their trip.
Weather experts have declared 2023 an El Niño year – a natural phenomenon that occurs cyclically and causes fluctuations in the global climate.
The UN’s World Meteorological Organization said it will raise temperatures around the world, and the effect is likely to continue for the rest of the year.
And despite the heat this summer, Europe’s record temperature of 48.8C – recorded in 2021 in Sardinia, Sicily – has not been reached and is currently not forecast to be broken.
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Iona Cleave
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