I thought I’d never escape Greek inferno, says Briton
TWO Britons told last night of their miracle escape from the devastating Greek wildfires.
Susan Stephos fled as flames engulfed her house while Chhaganlal Jagatia was rescued from a smouldering hotel after remaining to tend an elderly relative.
Speaking from her hospital bed, expat Mrs Stephos, still wearing an oxygen mask as she struggled to breathe, described how she ran through the flames to escape on Monday night.
To her heartbreak, her dog Maia ran in a different direction and she had to leave her behind as the inferno raged around Mati, a resort 25 miles east of Athens.
‘When I was in the house and the fire was going over, I thought I am not going to make it, this is the end,’ Mrs Stephos told the BBC. ‘ But prayers were answered. And I managed.’
Mr Jagatia, 76, from Egham, Surrey, was left with burns to his hands and legs after he stayed in his hotel in Mati to protect a 95-year-old relative. From his hospital bed in Athens, he told the Mail: ‘The fire started approaching us at 5pm and I could see it in the distance.’
Mr Jagatia was on holiday with his wife, their son, daughter-in-law and baby granddaughter, and the daughterin-law’s grandmother Smaragpi Kandalepa. ‘All the other houses I could see were on fire, but not the hotel,’ he said. ‘I asked [the rest of from the wildfires, which also the family] to go because everything devastated an area 30 miles was falling on us. I west of Athens, reached 85 – could not possibly go because with 100 still missing. the old lady could not walk.’ Families began returning to
As his wife ran to the sea with the charred remains of their their one-year-old granddaughter homes in the middle- class Stefania, he stayed with community, describing the Mrs Kandalepa, applying wet scenes as ‘hell on earth’. towels around her as the building Scores of Red Cross volunteers began heating up and handed out water, food smoke started to choke them. and medicines to the homeless. They were finally rescued at In neighbouring Rafina, 10.45pm. The rest of the family the town hall and gymnasium spent three hours in the sea as were turned into aid centres. they waited to be evacuated. Student Sotiris Capodistrias,
Mr Jagatia was continuing to 18, told how his mother, father recover last night but Mrs Kandalepa and two brothers fled their flat was in an induced coma. above a mini-mart where a Mr Jagatia’s son Jay said: worker died in the blaze. ‘What my dad did was heroic.’ ‘We heard screaming, which
Last night the death toll surprised us because we were told, “Don’t worry, there is no danger, the fires are under control”. But the fire came here within one hour and we had no idea until we smelt it.
‘We saw people running and screaming everywhere. There is a small road that leads to the back and on to the beach and used that to escape.’
He added: ‘ There was a woman here who burnt to death in the mini-mart. I have lost more than five friends.’
Firemen told how they had never seen such a devastating blaze as winds of up to 68mph fanned the wildfires, spreading them across an area of around five miles by seven miles around Mati on the Attica peninsula.