[ad_1]
Athens – Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday badumed "political responsibility" for the fire that killed 87 people east of Athens on Monday, the deadliest one ever seen in the country, but has conceded nothing about the organization of the relief the night of the drama.
Faced with the controversy that broke out on the day after three days of national mourning, Mr. Tsipras, speaking in front of his council of ministers, said " fully badume before the Greek people the political responsibility for this tragedy ".
Like many of his ministers and his spokesperson in the last 24 hours, he pointed out " the irregularities urban planning " chronic, that is to say mainly the illegal constructions on the coast, as was the case in Mati, a seaside resort 40 km from Athens that was ravaged by fires.
In addition to a package of measures amounting to 40 million euros to meet the needs of the victims, Mr. Tsipras committed to quickly establish " a national plan to ward " to these irregularities, and invited the opposition to " participate in this national effort ".
Busy since coming to power in early 2015 to face " human catastrophe caused by austerity policies " due to the economic crisis, the radical left-wing Prime Minister conceded that perhaps he had abandoned " the risk of other disasters emanating from the irregularities of the past ".
The mea culpa on town planning are recurrent in the country after each disaster, without provoking real stunts to the civic indiscipline and the official complaisance it enjoys.
But Mr. Tsipras did not self-criticize the operational management of the events Monday night, praising the efforts of firefighters and volunteers.
– Helicopter –
In Mati, many survivors were on the contrary angry, accusing the authorities of a lack of prevention and effective instructions to evacuate the city.
When the fire broke out they should have sent a helicopter with a megaphone to tell us to go to the sea, and everyone should have gone without panic and on foot to avoid a chaos of cars ", estimated to AFP Nikos Stavrinidis, who had to be carried by the current for five hours in the sea with other people, two of whom drowned.
Some " waited four hours on the beach to see the first rescue boat arrive, and it was not a coastguard boat, but fishermen of their own free will, with their boats ", continued this fifties.
Victims were either drowned, suffocated or burned by fire, during traffic jams created by panic in the village lanes, or seeking pbadages to the coast, often rocky or inaccessible because of the presence villas or resorts.
million. Tsipras also seemed to endorse the thesis of the arson, in support of which his government said to have " a serious element " Thursday night.
" If the aim of the authors is to undermine social cohesion (…) we must organize the defense of the country and society and guarantee the protection of citizens ", a- he started.
At Mati, the rescuers who continue to rake the rubble among the calcined pines did not exclude new macabre discoveries.
– 'Zone de guerre'-
" It's a long-term job, you have to wait for the ashes to fall and sometimes iron four or five times at the same place before finding something ] ", reported the rescuer Stavroula Stergiadou.
The identification of victims must also last a few days, " 75 to 80% of bodies being charred ," said Grigoris Leon, president of the Greek society of forensic medicine.
The weekend promised to be devoted to Mr. Tsipras' answers to his political opponents.
Even before his intervention, the main opposition party, the New Democracy (right), had denounced a " comedy of rejection of all responsibility ".
" This government is dangerous and must leave ", reacted one of the leaders of the centrist opposition, Fofi Gennimata. Another, Stavros Theodorakis, was indignant that not a single official resigned.
In Mati, where 49% of the houses were declared uninhabitable, the survivors continued on Friday to try to save what could still be, supported by a vast impetus of solidarity, with the influx of donations and volunteers.
" It looks like a war zone, it's indescribable ", one of them, Zoi Pantelidou, 26 years old.
Source link
