Wild storms kill at least 7 in Greece
Intensity of the storms had been totally unexpected
THESSALONIKI, GREECE — At least seven people died and more than 100 were injured after intense thunderstorms hit northern Greece, tearing out tall pine trees and destroying houses in their passing, officials said Thursday.
The area affected, Halkidiki, is a peninsula with sandy beaches that is popular with tourists. Thessaloniki, the second-biggest city in Greece, is just to the north.
Kostas Pahinis, fire brigade commander for Central Macedonia, the region that includes Halkidiki, said by phone Thursday that the storms had been so severe that a kind of tornado had developed.
“It is the first time this has happened to us,” Pahinis said. “It ripped out more than 500 trees.”
The fire service said that a warning about winds and rain had been issued but that the intensity of the storms had been totally unexpected.
Six of those who died were foreign nationals, Pahinis said, with the count of those injured at 102.
At about 10 p.m. Wednesday, residents and vacationers were forced to seek cover when a strong wind began blowing across the region, carrying away beach umbrellas and aluminum roofs.
The sudden change came as a surprise to many, after several days of clear, hot weather.
An older Czech couple died when the wind blew away their camping trailer, while a 54-yearold Romanian woman and her 8-year-old son were killed on the beach after the roof of a nearby tavern collapsed in Nea Plagia, a small, seaside area in the western part of Halkidiki, according to fire brigade officials.
A Russian man and his 2-yearold son died after a tree collapsed near Potidea Palace, a four-star hotel in which they were staying, officials said.
The fire service in Polygyros, the capital of Halkidiki, received more than 600 calls for help Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, according to the Greek fire service website, while 140 firefighters, 44 firefighting vehicles, 21 ambulances and a doctor in a mobile unit were deployed. A state of emergency was also declared.
Melina Meletlidou said she was in Nea Potidea, a seaside town in the western part of the Halkidiki Peninsula, when the storm hit. At about 9:30 p.m., Meletlidou, her husband, their two children and her sister drove back from dinner at a tavern nearby to the house they had rented, she said.
It was so hot that they had to turn on the air conditioning during their short drive, Meletlidou said.
“Nothing suggested what would follow,” she said by phone Thursday, adding that, half an hour later, the weather had changed completely.
“The wind was so strong that we were trying to close the windows but it kept throwing us back,” she said. Soon, power was out, and objects from inside and outside the house were flying around.
“The wooden ceiling was creaking; the windows broke; water was running on the walls; tree branches and roof tiles were coming in through the windows,” she said.
Charalampos Stergiadis, head of civil protection in Central Macedonia, said by phone Thursday that the streets were being cleared of fallen trees and debris, and efforts were underway to reinstate power in all houses.
“We’re trying to preserve life as it was,” he said. “It was an unprecedented phenomenon.”
Zanis Prodromos, a professor of meteorology and climatology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, said the storms had been “definitely an extreme phenomenon.”
He said that Halkidiki had been struck by a “mesoscale convective system” — a collection of thunderstorms — that operated in high wind speeds. It was not unusual for whirlwinds to develop as part of a mesoscale convective system, he said.