‘What this town now needs is for visitors to stop cancelling trips’

A HOLE in a mansion’s wall, and the burned outline of a car, show where Zoe Holohan was rescued.

As she lay in the boot of the vehicle, with nine Greek strangers in the front and back, it knocked against the wall and came to a stop.

‘There was fire in front of them, behind them, to the side of them, even on top of them,’ says firefighter Helen Antopoulou.

There is a mansion on the other side of the road, completely gutted on the top floor. A few surviving oranges hang in the trees in the garden, offering a small hint of colour in the darkened ash.

To the left of where the car was found, a pine wood is completely burned; to the right, the winding stairways to the sea is surrounded by blackened trees, which still smoulder three days later.

The only other person at the scene is a young student, Anthi Angelikaki, who is searching the pine trees looking for injured animals.

‘Everyone has to do something, so this is what I

‘Everyone has to do something’

can do,’ she says. ‘We found a fox and took it to the vet, but it did not survive. We are finding dogs, cats and birds too.’

At the Mati Hotel, they are running on a generator and trying hard to return to normal life.

The manager, Natasa Katvela, and her sister Eleni point to photos of tragic Irishman Brian O’Callaghan-Westropp on Greek TV, as the newsreader reads through the list of the dead.

The next on the screen is a local woman called Nellie. ‘She was my good friend,’ says Eleni.

One of her staff, Joanna Saripapazoglou, pleads with us to send out the message that the town does not need the supplies of toilet paper, rice packets and second-hand shoes pouring into the relief centres – most of which will now be donated to war-torn Syria.

‘This is a wealthy town,’ she says. ‘What we really, really need is for people to return to us, to stop cancelling their holidays. What we need is tourists, not toilet paper. What this town needs is life.’