Families’ desperate search for loved ones after paradise reduced to ashen wasteland
FAMILIES were desperately searching for their loved ones last night amid the chaos of wildfires in Greece that have left at least 79 dead and transformed one of the country’s most popular holiday resorts into an ashen wasteland.
Among the missing were Sophia and Vasiliki Philipopoulos, nine-year-old twins who disappeared along with their grandmother shortly after the flames engulfed the resort of Mati, near Athens.
Yiannis, their father, spent an entire day searching for the girls and found a glimmer of hope in a reel of news footage that appeared to show them getting off a makeshift rescue boat.
He issued a heartfelt plea to television cameras to be reunited with his daughters, but it was false hope. Last night, it emerged the girls spotted on camera were not his children; Sophia and Vasiliki are still unaccounted for.
Zoe Holohan and Brian O’callaghan-westropp, a newly married Irish couple, were also caught up in the blaze as they spent their honeymoon in Mati.
Separated in their frantic escape from the inferno, Ms Holohan, who works in advertising for an Irish newspaper, managed to escape with burns to her head and hands. But as she recovered in hospital last night, Mr O’callaghan-westropp’s family confirmed that he had died in the fire. The family requested privacy to grieve.
Colleagues at Blood Bikes East, the emergency medical transport charity where Mr O’callaghan-westropp volunteered, described him as a “selfless” man of action. “His heart is in the right place and he always wants to help,” they said in a Facebook post before his death was confirmed yesterday.
Greek firefighter Manos Tsaloagos described how he rescued Ms Holohan as flames neared a car she was hiding in. “When we found her first of all we sprayed her with water,” he said. “I took her in my arms, and me and my two colleagues brought her to the fire truck and we brought her to the fire station...maybe if we hadn’t found her when we did she would be dead.”
Meanwhile, countless Greek families were trawling hospitals and makeshift aid centres in the hope of being reunited with their loved ones.
Some were lucky. Last night a British grandfather told of his miracle escape from the wildfires after becoming trapped in his hotel while trying to rescue an elderly relative.
Chhaganlal Jagatia, 76, from Egham, Surrey, was staying at the Myrto Hotel on the outskirts of Mati with Mani, his wife, Jay, his son, Maria, his daughterin-law, and two granddaughters aged three and 18 months.
At around 5pm, the family and around 90 guests and staff saw the fires approaching on all sides of the hotel. “Within a few minutes all the trees were on fire. I know about fire safety so I said to everyone, ‘Grab your passports and go, leave all your belongings’,” Mr Jagatia told The Daily Telegraph from his hospital bed in Athens.
As the family fled for safety, Mr Jagatia stayed behind to help Maria’s 93-year-old mother who was trapped in an upstairs room – but her wheelchair had been burnt. “I [thought] I cannot leave her here, I have to save her. I could not get her far. All around us, the buildings were on fire and there was smoke coming in the windows,” she said. “I went and shut the doors to stop smoke coming in, I knew if fire came in, it would burn. I dragged her on to a bed and we waited.”
In what he described as “a miracle”, the fire did not catch hold of the hotel and they were eventually reunited with the rest of the family.
Many who sought refuge in the water were also picked up by fishermen, including Halil Tafir, a 42-year-old Egyptian. He said it was his “duty as a human” to spend Monday night and the small hours of Tuesday morning searching for survivors, while the flames drew so close that at one point they were licking around his boat.
“They were terrified and nervous. I pulled them up with my hands and used the rope to get them,” he said.
“I was so glad I could rescue them and they thanked me. I’m not a hero, I was just doing my duty.”
Alex Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, has said he suspected the fires may have been set deliberately, while the country’s anti-terror unit has launched an investigation.
Yesterday evening, Theresa May, the Prime Minister, praised the “remarkable bravery” of the Greek emergency services and said the UK stood ready to offer support.
In Mati, where the fire caused the heaviest damage and loss of life, the once stunning countryside was transformed into a barren landscape of charred houses, melted cars and twisted trees.
While most of the dead have been taken to Athens for identification, the bodies of pets – cats, dogs and even a tortoise – littered the streets.
Families stared in shock at the husks of their villas, with some beginning to clear up the debris with shovels.
Georgina Venieri, a 23-year-old politics student at the University of Crete, told of how she floated for four hours in the sea by their holiday home waiting for rescue.
“We saw the fire at the end of the road, panicked and took what we could,” she said.
“We tried to drive away but the roads were blocked.”
As the flames rushed closer, they abandoned the car and ran towards the sea, at which point Ms Venieri became separated from the rest of her family.
“Everyone was panicking and we jumped in the water. I couldn’t breathe, I thought I was going to suffocate. Each time I tried to breathe, the waves took me,” she said.
“I could see boats and planes in the air and I was screaming but at first they couldn’t hear me. Finally, a small boat found me, saved me and reunited me with my family.
“We feel so lucky that we are all alive, but sadly that is not what happened with so many others.”
‘All around us, the buildings were on fire and there was smoke coming in the windows’