Chasing a fire that won’t give up

A cloud of smoke rising above the blackened hillside surrounding the village of Vati marks the spot of the most recent flare-up on Rhodes of a wildfire that has been rampaging across the southeastern Aegean island for more than a week. More threats loom, like the plumes of smoke coming from already scorched tracts or the smoking trunk of an incinerated tree close to a cluster of pine trees that escaped the passage of the blaze. On the winding road leading to the village of Laerma, a firetruck fills up from a water tanker before returning to the job of dousing these small residual fires before they're stoked by the next gust of wind.

Flare-ups that have gotten away, however, mainly in the southeast of the island, sent the wildfire back toward villages that had already come under threat, as was the case on Tuesday with Gennadi, where residents who had made their way back to...