rescue

50 boats rushed across the sea to evacuate people from the beach as the fire spread

A couple have described their terrifying escape after a wildfire surrounded their holiday resort, forcing hundreds of guests to flee towards the sea. Stephen and Anna Saunders had been staying at the Gava Waterman resort on Brač in Croatia for a week-long holiday.

Guests at the all-inclusive four-star waterfront hotel were initially reassured there was “nothing to worry about” despite ash falling from the sky and a huge orange glow visible over the hills. The couple, from Rainham, Kent, had arrived on the island last Monday and were aware there had been wildfires in the area for several days.

Stephen said a guide warned them on Friday that lightning strikes had caused the blaze. Despite the fires being close by, he said guests were repeatedly told the situation was under control. But on Saturday evening, September 12, the pair went out to dinner with friends and said they could see an “orange glow” in the sky.

“There was ash falling into our drinks,” Anna said. Just after 9.30pm, the power went out at the hotel. Shortly afterwards, Stephen says ash was “visibly falling from the sky”. At that point, the couple returned to their room and decided to pack a small bag “just in case”. Within minutes, a friend told them that trees were on fire right next to the hotel.

Anna said: “The embers were blowing across. I quickly changed my shoes and we went down by the sea, but there were no lights, and no one from the hotel was present. The fire was just shooting across, and it just came down so quickly, so we thought the best thing to do was get in the water.”

The 52-year-old said hundreds of people eventually gathered on wooden platforms and in the sea as smoke and flames surrounded the bay. “Everyone was absolutely terrified”, she added. “There were hundreds and hundreds of people all on these platforms or in the sea. We were basically trapped.”

Stephen said the only staff members he saw were entertainment and restaurant workers. He says there was no emergency lighting, no clear evacuation route, and reception was empty. A spokesperson for Waterman Hotels and Resorts denied that guests “were abandoned by the resort team”.

Stephen said he had to rescue an elderly couple who became stuck in automatic glass doors. “There were families, elderly people and disabled guests trying to get down a steep, dark resort towards a rocky beach while the fire closed in behind us,” he added.

“Within minutes, the trees around the beach were burning. The flames were above us. It was getting really hot and burning embers were raining down from the sky. At this point, people were jumping into the sea and trying to get away from the smoke.”

Firefighters eventually arrived and helped to organise a sea evacuation, and local boat owners came to help rescue those trapped. Stephen said around 50 boats came to help and praised the firefighters and local people who came to their aid.

The 57-year-old electrician said: “If it weren’t for them, I don’t know what would have happened.” The couple, who booked the holiday through TUI, were moved to accommodation in Split in the early hours of Sunday morning – on Anna’s birthday.

They returned home on Monday evening, but Anna said the experience has had a lasting impact. She explained: “We’re not sleeping properly. You just close your eyes, and you’re going through it all the time.”

Stephen said their luggage is expected to be recovered, although other guests lost their possessions. He is planning to lodge a formal complaint to the hotel along with other people impacted last week.

A spokesperson for Waterman Hotels and Resorts said it recognises how “frightening and traumatic” the ordeal was for guests and does “not seek to diminish or challenge anyone’s individual experience” of the evacuation. They explained that the resort’s layout, the loss of electricity, heavy smoke and poor visibility, and the speed at which the fire advanced meant guests experienced different circumstances and had access to different information at different times.

“We would, however, like to correct one important claim that has appeared in some accounts: our guests were not abandoned by the resort team,” they said. They said staff at the resort, which also hosts easyJet and Jet2 trips, initially acted on “the official information and instructions provided by the authorities and emergency services coordinating the response to the wildfire”, and the resort had been instructed not to evacuate guests.

They added: “Conditions then changed with extraordinary speed. An extreme change in wind drove the fire towards the resort, power was lost, and heavy smoke severely reduced visibility.

“When our team on the ground saw that the situation had changed dramatically and that the fire presented an immediate danger to the resort, our reception manager made the decision to activate the alarm and begin the evacuation. Our employees then assisted guests throughout the evacuation.

“The final group of our employees involved left on the last boat used in the evacuation, after establishing that the guests had gone. Other employees travelled during the fire to assist guests and colleagues at the resort.”

Courage and extraordinary efforts

The spokesperson said reception, kitchen, technical and other resort staff stepped forward to help. They added that the company has received many messages from guests thanking them for their assistance, but accepts that “this does not mean that every guest had the same experience”.

“With more than 360 guests spread across a large resort, no electricity, heavy smoke, extremely poor visibility and a fire advancing at exceptional speed, it was extraordinarily difficult for information and assistance to reach everyone simultaneously,” they explained.

“We understand that some guests therefore felt they did not have the information or guidance they needed at critical moments. We take those experiences seriously.

“However, just as we would never question the fear or distress experienced by any of our guests, we believe it is important that the actions of the many employees who remained and helped others in extremely dangerous circumstances are also accurately represented.”

The team is currently working through inquiries from guests regarding luggage, documentation and other belongings. The spokesperson described the situation as an “extraordinary emergency”, with conditions changing “minute from minute”.

They said: “The courage and extraordinary efforts of the firefighters and emergency services, the solidarity of local people who came by boat and helped evacuate guests, and the commitment of our own employees are not things we believe should be called into question.

Deeply traumatic

“They are a source of profound gratitude and pride, and they are a major reason why far more serious and tragic consequences were avoided.

“We will examine our own actions with the same seriousness. We will conduct a detailed review of the events of that night, including our procedures and communications, and identify any lessons that need to be learned.

“Saturday night was deeply traumatic for our guests, our employees and the local community. Alongside that trauma, however, we will remember the extraordinary courage, solidarity and willingness of people to help one another in exceptionally dangerous circumstances.”

A TUI UK spokesperson said: “We know this will have been a frightening and distressing experience for those affected by the wildfire on the island of Brac. The safety of our customers is our highest priority, and our local teams have been supporting those impacted and working closely with the hotel and local authorities.

“We would like to thank the emergency services for their response to this rapidly developing situation.”

The U.S. military’s top officer on Wednesday talked about how AI is changing the character of warfare and offered two examples to illustrate his points. His comments included new insights into how two U.S. Army AH-64 Apache crew members were rescued after being shot down by an Iranian drone near the coast of Oman in June. The recovery effort involved America’s first known use of an uncrewed surface vessel (USV) executing a personnel recovery action as part of a military search and rescue operation.

“Information moves so fast that leader decision times have compressed from weeks down to days down to seconds,” explained Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during his keynote speech at the Air & Space Forces Air, Space and Cyber Conference that TWZ is attending. “In the future fight, advantage will go to the side who can see first, who can understand first, decide first, and act first, and along the way, be a learning organization, and no factor is accelerating change as fast as artificial intelligence and advancing cyber capabilities.”

“AI is here now, and it’s already changing the way militaries see, sense, decide, and act across the joint force,” the chairman proclaimed.

The first example Caine used to highlight these changes took place on June 8. After the Apache went down, “U.S. CENTCOM launched a rapid, responsive joint search and rescue effort to recover the crew. That response drew on the totality of the joint force, and ultimately was required to use enabled unmanned vessels to participate in the rescue of downed U.S. service members for the first time ever.”

As we noted in our previous coverage, CENTCOM deployed “a U.S. Navy Corsair unmanned surface vessel,” the command’s spokesman told us at the time.

The ability to pull off that rescue mission “did not appear overnight,” Caine pointed out. “It came from the men and women of Task Force 59, CENTCOM’s forward-leaning unmanned joint maritime unit who spent the last several years testing, integrating, and operationalizing unmanned systems and AI in one of the most demanding and kinetic environments on Earth right now.”

“What helped make this possible was not a bunch of general officers and flag officers,” Caine continued. “What made this possible was a bunch of entrepreneurial sailors and members of the joint force on watch floors, at piers, managing networks of unmanned systems across thousands of miles of water, and using AI to turn massive amounts of data into a crisp, clear, perfect maritime picture that allowed us to go grab those two soldiers in the water.”

The second example Caine shared about the use of AI “points in the other direction, not how quickly we are using these tools, but how quickly these tools are changing the threat.”

In Ukraine, “we see first-person view drones operating in heavily contested EMI [electromagnetic interference] environments. Some now using AI-enabled computer vision to continue to drive towards targets, even when there’s no GPS or the links are cut. That gives small units affordable precision and shows how quickly software and autonomy are changing what is possible at the tactical edge, and the results are stark.”

The use of AI to enable lower-end drone warfare is a topic TWZ has been among the first to point out.

“In certain locations on the front line of troops right now, the life expectancy of a new Russian recruit arriving on the front lines is as little as 20 to 30 minutes,” Caine added. “Think about that. This is what happens when low-cost precision is fielded fast, adapted quickly, and scaled across the battlefield.”

“The price of lethal exchange is decreasing day over day,” the chairman noted. “One wonders what the future of close air support looks like, but I am comforted by the fact that each and every one of you are in this room thinking about that. Taken together, these examples from the Straits of Hormuz to the front lines in Ukraine show how quickly technology is changing the character of war, and this means our joint force needs to do two things at one time.”

“[W]e need to prepare the joint force to win in this kind of conflict,” the general stated. “We have to assume from now on that our formations will be hunted by autonomous systems, jammed across the spectrum, and tracked in real time, and we have to transition the joint force to be prepared to fight and win our future war by generating and delivering lethality at scale with an agile, optimized, high-low mix of combat capabilities to give the young members of the 2.8-million member all volunteer joint force the tools that they need before they need them.”

Contact the author: howard@twz.com 

ANCHORAGE, Alaska: Bobbing for days atop a capsized skiff in Alaska’s frigid Bering Sea, a 15-year-old boy held on until he was rescued by a fishing vessel this week, the US Coast Guard said.

The boy’s brother and a cousin died sometime after the small boat flipped, according to the rescuers.

Their bodies were found after the teen was hoisted to safety near St. Lawrence Island — a remote Alaskan island that’s closer to Russia than it is to the United States.

The captain of the fishing boat, “The Northwest Explorer,” said the boy had clung to the skiff for close to three days. “That’s one tough kid,” Adam White told KTUU-TV in Anchorage.

Coast Guard planes and helicopters began searching for the skiff Monday morning after family members reported the three missing the night before. Authorities did not release the names of the three.

The group left St. Lawrence Island on Friday and planned to return early Sunday, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard said one of its air crews spotted the boy Monday morning and deployed a raft and supplies before contacting “The Northwest Explorer.”

Video of the rescue shows the boy in a bright yellow jacket kneeling atop the overturned skiff. The boat’s crew tosses the boy a line, tugging the skiff closer until they can pull him into a rescue basket.

The boy was experiencing symptoms of hypothermia when he got onto the boat, the Coast Guard said.

The fishing boat crew warmed him with blankets and hot packs, its captain said.

“Through the teeth chattering, he had mentioned that his brother was still under the skiff,” White said. “And then he said that, in the previous night, before our rescue, that his cousin had slipped away.”

For the Premier League’s biggest clubs, this competition is usually an opportunity to blood youngsters and give fringe players valuable minutes.

However, only 35-year-old Danny Welbeck, who scored twice, emerged from the starters with a compelling case for more regular involvement.

Even Valentin Barco, despite scoring Chelsea‘s fifth goal, was partly at fault for Leeds‘ second and was among several players who repeatedly surrendered possession during a difficult first half.

Young attackers Estevao Willian and Jamie Gittens suffered the disappointment of being substituted at half-time, while £40m signing Geovany Quenda, who joined from Sporting, did not add to his solitary substitute appearance for the club as he watched from the bench.

Midfielder Reggie Watson, making his debut at the age of 16, was also withdrawn at the break after being booked.

Alonso later said he would not take a “cynical” view as some on the outside might about the difference in level between his proven stars and Chelsea‘s back-up options.

He added: “I know that probably I have to take the right decisions for them to show their best level, so it’s something that I will analyse and learn from today.”

Nevertheless, reaching the fourth round is important for Chelsea.

It is not only about preserving their hopes of silverware in a season without European football, but Chelsea are also a club that need as many competitive fixtures as possible.

They have a 27-man squad, supported by a strong academy pipeline, and these matches are vital for keeping a large group of players engaged throughout the campaign.

There is an irony, then, that Palmer, Rogers and Chelsea‘s other established stars may have secured future opportunities for the very fringe players whose performances had put the club’s EFL Cup campaign at risk.