Storm Daniel causes deadly floods in Greece
Athens, Sep 8 (EFE).- At least 10 people have died in Greece amid heavy floods caused by Storm Daniel, officials said Friday.
Authorities fear the death toll could rise further as four people were still missing, while witnesses have said they have seen bodies that were unaccounted for.
Although the storm has subsided and there has been no rain in the area since Thursday evening, hundreds of people in villages in the Karditsa region were still trapped on their terraces or on the upper floors and roofs of multi-story buildings where they rushed to safety.
Rescue efforts that began Thursday involving 15 helicopters from the fire department and the Greek armed forces were still in effect.
Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who visited the damaged areas on Friday, spoke of an “unprecedented” phenomenon and said he would ask the European Union for resources to tackle the consequences of the disaster.
Four people are still missing in the Magnesia region, including a newlywed Austrian couple on vacation on the Pelion peninsula.
Thousands of residents and tourists were without electricity or water supplies in villages and resorts on the peninsula, as the road network connecting to the regional capital, Volos, was destroyed, the state agency AMNA reported.
More than 1,800 people have been rescued this week, firefighters reported.
It is feared that the number of victims will rise further, since in the area of Thessaly (center), the most affected by the huge masses of water, there are large villages in which thousands of people live.
“There are dead bodies in the streets,” Polivios Polizos, a resident of one of the flooded villages, who was rescued along with his minor children with an inflatable raft, told MEGA television.
The torrential rains left the village of Zagora in Magnesia on Tuesday with a record 754 liters per square meter in 24 hours, almost double the previous maximum, recorded in 2009.
According to images from the European Sentinel-1 satellite analyzed by the National Observatory of Athens, an estimated 72,000 hectares in the center of the country were flooded.
The storm comes in the wake of several extreme heat waves and dozens of fires that burned more than 150,000 hectares, about 1.2 % of Greek territory, leaving at least 25 people dead. EFE
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