After the Apocalypse
Amid the charred ruins of Mati, those who miraculously escaped the f lames must now try to rebuild, to mourn the dead... and to make sense, as far as any human can, of the tragedy that has been visited upon them
TWO families – one horrifiying decision: which burning path to take out of a devastating inferno? The road to the right was shorter but the flames more intense. The road to the left was longer, but there may be a way downhill through the choking smoke.
Karatza Magdalini grabbed two little dresses for her 30-month-old old daughter, Maria Irini.
That was all her family took from their house. Their home would have to burn down, their rabbits and chickens would have to die.
They could see their nearest neighbour, Dozas Argiris, run to his car with his son, his wife, and elderly mother-in-law. The Argiris family drove off on the clearer path to the left.
Karatza’s husband, Basilis, started up the car. Should they follow them? They blessed themselves. In the back sat Maria Irini and her 13-year-old sister, Catherini.
It was the feast day of Mary Magdalene the day before, who is Karatza Magdalini’s patron saint.
She hoped she would be lucky. ‘Go right’, she said.
Basilis put his foot to the floor. They crashed through burning debris, a tunnel of burning trees and kept going. The scorching heat pressed against them, all around them was fire. They pressed on because to hesitate was death. They reached the Athens-toMarathon motorway.
A restaurant was on fire, whole neighbourhoods were burning. They turned left to the port of Rafini, the fire was pressing towards them, chasing them to the sea.
Behind them, their house was collapsing, the children’s bikes were melting, every possession they had in the world was up in flames, their animals were already dead.
Meanwhile, Dozas Argiris drove in the opposite direction to where his friend and neighbour, Dimitris Papaioannou, lived. Dimitis had a disability since birth and would surely die if they didn’t save him.
Dozas ran into the house, grabbed Dimitris and his walking frame and carried him to the car. By now the winds had changed, they were dragging jets of flames in their direction. Dozas drove quickly.
He only got 30 metres from Dimitris’ house before one of the jets of flames hit the car from the side.
Toxic fumes from the tyres enveloped the vehicle. Waves of heat choked them.
All five people in the car died before they could even open the doors – Dozas; his wife, Anni; their son, Panagiotis, Anni’s, mother Marias and their neighbour and friend, Dimitris.
By now, Basilis and his family were driving down the motorway in the opposite direction, all windows open, gasping for air as flames 30 metres high blasted into the air behind them.
They could hear the sounds of cars exploding.
They reached the port town of Rafina where they were one family among hundreds pouring into the town. Karatza grabbed the children close to her and wept.
She tries to tell the story now but she falters.
Basilis finishes what she cannot say.
‘If we had driven the other way, we would have died with Dozas and his family. There was no way out for them. They did not find their bodies until the next day,’ he says.
Karatza and her family have nothing, except the clothes on their backs, their car and Maria Irini’s two little dresses.
Basilis works as a supermarket security guard and they have no savings.
Karatza blesses herself then points to the sky and says: ‘We, the children…’ and stops.
She wants to say that the children are uninjured but she sinks her hands to her face and tears seep through her fingers.
They returned yesterday to the local Greek Orthodox Church, only a few hundred metres from their burned-out home. They are here to pick up donations sent to the parish from all across Greece – their first chance of a change of clothes since the fire.
Father Nikolas Poulis greets them warmly.
The family, one of many newly homeless in this district, move slowly and distracted through the collection of clothes, picking out jeans, T-shirts and coats for the children.
They are now staying in an apartment offered rent-free by a Church patron.
‘We are getting many, many people offering free apartments,’ says Father Nikolas. He points to a map on the wall, into which he sticks more red and yellow pins.
Red means completely destroyed, yellow means partly destroyed. To those in areas marked by the yellow pins, he and his team deliver hot meals and cold water. To those in red, he has to find new homes, new clothes, new toys, new furniture, new lives.
‘Half of our parish is forest, or at least, was forest. In the remainder, we have ten deaths and many injured. We are all exhausted from the struggle,’ he says.
Karatza, Basilis and their children take us to their burned out home. In the living-room are the remains of melted children’s bicycles.
The walls have collapsed in, the roof is gone. The blackened remains of a teddy bear lie in one of the bedrooms.
At the back of the house, I look into the shed. The stench of death stings the eyes. Dead rabbits and hens lie in cages.
Karatza looks away as I peer in. Right behind the animal shed is the remains of the Argiris home, all of its occupants now dead.
Katherina had no choice. She swam out to sea, with the two boys lying on her back, gripping her neck and shoulder. For five-and-a-half hours she swam, as far out to sea as she could to save the boys from the smoke. She cried out and cried and nobody came.
The Argiris family’s bodies are now in Athens, nobody knows when they will be brought back for funerals.
‘There are so many people in hospital; it may be some time before funerals because people want to be discharged so they can say goodbye,’ says Father Nikolas.
Next to his church lies the Rafina police yard, where hundreds of burned-out cars have been dumped. They are all monochrome grey, their paint melted away.
Somewhere in there is the car in which the Argiris family perished.
Walking up and down through line after line of gray Fords and Hyundais is Andreas Androutsoboi, looking for what remains of his Toyota Yaris.
His mother and children ran to the sea and escaped by boat. A burned out car is of little consequence. Still, he needs to identify it so he can claim the insurance. It is proving an impossible task. ‘All of the cars are the same colour now. It might be here, it might not. Every hour, more and more cars are coming.’
He points to the Athens-Marathon motorway.
‘Every year, there are fires, but they never, ever crossed the motorway to all the houses below. The fires stayed above and burned only trees. How could this year’s fire do this?’
He says it incredulously, as if the fire has broken some unwritten rule with the people, as if jumping the motorway was a taboo previous fires had dared not cross.
We drive up into the hills, where, he tells us, there are still hundreds of burned out cars lying on the narrow roadways. Every path we take reveals more grey cars, more destroyed houses, more black forests. At the very top of the hills, we see three generations of one family stop their car and stare down a driveway, as if afraid to take a step further.
They are Alesandros Zogopoulusr, his mother Sophia and his grandmother, Harriclia.
The family lives in Athens, they have their two-story summer home here. It overlooks the entire valley, surrounded by hundreds of acres of now-ashen pine.
Only a shell remains of their house now.
The family had come here every year since Harriclia’s late husband built it in 1972. She tries hard not to show her tears as she says that he constructed it by himself over several summers.
Many of her photographs, and family mementos, are gone with the fire. Her daughter, Sophia, points to the animal sheds and makes a chicken sound and motions flapping chicken wings when I asked if there were once animals there.
‘No more of them for five years here, so thank God, the birds not burn here.’
Even in this tragedy, everyone manages a smile, at Sophia’s earnest chicken impression.
We thank them and drive down the long winding roads to the beach in the small coastal town of Mati, where Irish honeymooner, Brian O’Callaghan-Westropp, and dozens more people were killed when the fire charged down from the hills.
The tiny beach, close to where he was last seen, has been taken over by the Greek army, which distributes food and water to people staring quietly out at the sea, many sobbing. At least 40 people are missing, many of them had dived into the water here to escape the burning inferno behind them.
Among those sobbing is Katherina Mytilinaiou, who ran down here with her six-year-old, Alex, and three-year-old, Jorge, as fires closed in behind them and the sea air in front of them was filling with choking smoke.
She had no choice. She swam out to sea, with the two boys lying on her back, gripping her neck and shoulder. For five and a half hours she swam, as far out to sea as she could to save the boys from the smoke. She cried out and cried and nobody came. She conserved energy by floating and kicking her legs. Eventually, when she felt she would drown, she struggled back to the shore. It was 11.30pm at night. She and boys lay on the beach exhausted.
A navy boat spotted them and pulled them onboard.
She finds it difficult to recount the experience, yet feels she had to come back to this beach, as if to confirm what happened was not an awful, surreal dream.
She falters several times as she recounts her story. ‘People ask me: how did you stay afloat for so long with two boys on my back? They are my boys! I am a mother and the only thing between them and death is my strength. Ask any mother how she could do this?
‘At which point am I going to say I can’t do any more?’