A family from Northern Ireland evacuated due to the wildfires in Rhodes have said it was “hell” trying to get home from the Greek island.

Conor and Danielle Cullen took a holiday to Rhodes in Greece with their two daughters, Chloe, 13, and Molly, 11 and endured a “brutal” return to their home in Co Tyrone which took several days.

They had to face a boat journey in the dark, emergency accommodation and trying to arrange travel back to Belfast with little information.

After being evacuated from their hotel to a beach five miles away, Mr and Mrs Cullen were told that buses would be returning to take them back to the hotel, but as it grew dark Mrs Cullen said the danger of the nearby fire became more apparent.

“All you kept hearing was ‘A bus is coming, a bus is coming’ and then it starts to get dark and there’s no electric, so no streetlights, no nothing,” she said.

“And the darker it was getting the more you could see the flames, because during the day you couldn’t see flames, it was all smoke, but then when it was getting darker, the sky, it was just red and orange with flames.”