Greece flash floods kill at least 15 people
MANDRA: Greeks voiced despair and disbelief on Thursday after a flash flood killed at least 15 people and left hundreds homeless, with many blaming a system that allowed houses to be built on dried up river beds.
In the towns of Nea Peramos and Mandra west of the capital Athens, crumpled cars and mangled furniture lay on roads coated in the thick mud left behind by a raging torrent that smashed through homes on Wednesday morning.
“We are ruined. My tavern and my house are gone,” said Paraskevas Stamou, a restaurant owner in Mandra. ‘‘Everything is gone, the road is gone, the water is still flowing and we were flooded again last night and this morning. We are expecting another downpour tonight. It’s like God hates us,” he said.
To escape the lethal floodwaters, residents took desperate measures.
“We had nowhere to sleep. We slept on the roof, we found carpets to cover ourselves,” said a man in Mandra whose house was gutted by the flood but remained standing.
Between sobs, his mother added: “Everything went. We don’t have anyone to help us. I don’t have help from anyone.”
Elderly people streets in muddied bewildered.
“What I am concerned about is the indifference — there was no one there by our side to say, ‘take courage’. I didn’t want anything else, nothing,” said Mandra resident Maria Kriada.
“Did anyone ask me if I had any wandered the clothing, looking water to drink? If I had any food to eat? If I had somewhere to sleep? No one came to say this.” Bad weather continued on Thursday. Officials said they were waiting for conditions to improve before giving a clearer picture of the damage. As building crept closer to the road, Five people were still missing. streams that would have drained runoff Flags flew at half-mast from from the nearby Pateras mountains state buildings and the Acropolis on were blocked. Thursday as the government declared “Of course the state wasn’t three days of national mourning. prepared... we cannot compete with
Newspapers expressed anger. ‘‘A nature,” said Christos Zeferos, head of Crime,” was the headline in Ta Nea the research centre for Atmospheric daily, superimposed on a picture of a Physics and Climatology Academy of woman being comforted next to an Athens, adding that climate change overturned car. ‘‘ The Deeds of Man,” meant people should expect more wrote the leftist Avgi, referring to weather-related disasters. unlicensed constructions. “We should be prepared for more
Experts blamed haphazard frequent, and different phenomena,” he constructionsaid.whichthenaturalpath for water runoff obstructed, and soil Many of the victims were elderly. erosion on a mountain range hit by The youngest was a 36-year old truck fires. driver who called his mother as the
Both towns were built along an floodwaters rose around his lorry. old motorway linking Athens to the The line went dead soon afterwards. Peloponnese city of Corinth.