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Greece is holding a three-day disaster exercise on the tourist island of Crete with both visitors and operators stressing the need to prepare for emergencies, including quakes and fires.<\/p>\n
The civil protection ministry said the three-day exercise named Minoas, which concludes on Wednesday, is the largest held in the country.<\/p>\n
The scenarios included tsunamis, industrial accidents and tourist rescues.<\/p>\n
“The feeling of safety is very important to us, our associates and our customers,” Nikos Vlasiadis, general manager of a five-star hotel near Iraklio, told AFP.<\/p>\n
The hotel on Tuesday took part in a simulation exercise responding to a 7.2-magnitude earthquake emergency.<\/p>\n
A day earlier, a similar scenario involving a 6.4-magnitude undersea earthquake had played out in the city of Hania.<\/p>\n
“Things have changed and we need to be ready,” said Vlasiadis, fake blood streaming down his face.<\/p>\n
“The purpose is to highlight problems so they can be addressed,” Efthymios Lekkas, head of Greece’s earthquake planning and protection organisation (OASP), told AFP.<\/p>\n
More than 160,000 residents are participating including some 80,000 schoolchildren, Lekkas said.<\/p>\n
A 4.9-magnitude tremor struck the island last August, following a 5.1-magnitude quake in May 2023.<\/p>\n
“Tourists are not obliged to know (what to do in the event of an earthquake). Hotels must have (emergency) plans,” Lekkas said.<\/p>\n
Over 32 million people visited Greece last year, setting a new arrivals record in a season marked by a prolonged heatwave and some of the worst wildfires in the country’s history that forced evacuations on the tourist islands of Rhodes and Corfu.<\/p>\n
Ronni Aram, a tourist from Germany taking part in the drill, said it was “absolutely essential when it comes to the case of a real emergency that everyone is prepared and knows what to do so that everyone will be safe”.<\/p>\n
“Caring is preparing,” added fellow German Yan Kiese.<\/p>\n
Greece is highly susceptible to earthquakes, being situated on several geological fault lines.<\/p>\n
Two people died on the island of Samos in October 2020 from a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in the Aegean Sea that also killed over 100 people in the coastal Turkish city of Izmir.<\/p>\n
The Greek government earlier this month offered compensation to tourists evacuated from wildfires on the holiday island of Rhodes last year so they can stay there again.<\/p>\n
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