On 13 August 2026, hundreds of people were taken off beaches by boat near the resort of Siviri in Halkidiki, northern Greece, because the road out was no longer usable. The following day Croatian and Greek resorts were evacuating simultaneously as fires stretched across the Mediterranean.
The season across Europe
- Greece: mass evacuations under gale-force winds; two firefighters killed when helicopters collided west of Athens
- France: the Aude fires, and the country's first reported fire-generated thundercloud
- Spain: the largest wildfire on record, a burn scar comparable in area to New York City
- Portugal, Croatia and Italy: simultaneous incidents forcing cross-border reinforcement
Why resorts keep appearing in these stories
Mediterranean tourism builds where the landscape is beautiful: on slopes, against pine and scrub, at the end of a single access road, with a sea behind. Those are the exact ingredients of an entrapment. Evacuation by sea is not a quirky detail — it is what happens when a fire cuts the only road.
The Costa del Sol's hillside urbanisations share that geometry. The response in Greece and Croatia was competent and fast, and people still had to leave by boat. Planning on the assumption that someone will arrive in time is planning on the best case of a bad season.
Sources
- Euronews — Hundreds of tourists rescued by boat as forest fire threatens northern Greek beaches
- Reuters — Hundreds evacuated from Croatian and Greek resorts as wildfires stretch across Europe
- AP — Two killed when firefighting helicopters collide near Athens
- NASA Earth Observatory — Spain's largest wildfire on record
Protecting a property in a high-risk area?
We survey homes across Marbella, Benahavís, Estepona and Sotogrande and specify a system sized to the property and its terrain.