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Among the tourists evacuated in emergency from the island of Rhodes, a Frenchwoman tells us, Sunday, July 23, how she had to leave everything hastily.
Thousands of tourists surrounded by flames, and among them, a 37-year-old Lorraine, Magalie François, her husband and their 8-year-old daughter. They only had time to take their passports, fleeing their hotel in bathing suits. “We walked for 7 km, with the fire next to us catching up with us at times. It was very complicated”says the evacuated tourist with emotion. “We had to put wet towels on us, we had to put towels on our mouths. The moment when we are afraid is the moment when we can move forward and we see that the fire is going faster than us, that there are people with children, people in bathing suits without papers, people with their 20 kg suitcase and we move forward as we can move forward, but we feel that the fire is coming next to us”explains Magalie François.
The flames next to you
“Clearly we are afraid for our lives, because we have never experienced this and we do not know how to manage, and there is no one to help us, no civil protection, no police, no army. We are all on a path 1.50 m wide.continues the evacuated tourist. “When you see the flames next to you and the very black smoke, it’s very complicated. So we walked for almost 4 hours, and 4 hours later, the army came to pick us up to bring us back to the end of the island”testifies Magalie François.