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The first fire alarm rang out in Kineta, a town an hour west of Athens, the capital, Monday at 12:30 pm. Then, at 15:57, the authorities received calls on their emergency line denouncing the flames near Rafina, east of the capital.
Just an hour later, the fire reached Neos Voutzas, to the northeast. The force winds he moved "like a lava flow" down the hill to the seaside city of Mati, said fire officials.
A few days later, the Greeks were still restoring one of the worst disasters of the nation's recent memory. But many wondered how so many scattered fires had broken out in such a short time and spread with such deadly velocity. The suspicion of arson associated with grief and broken recriminations broke the ruins of the fires that killed at least 85 people.
Authorities and residents have struggled to see the number of victims increase among the 2,500 houses burned. "These fires are not so innocent," Greek Minister of Public Order and Citizen Protection Nikos Toskas said on Monday, apparently suspecting the proliferation of many small fires.
Firefighters were still extinguishing smoking areas while Greece was undergoing a fatal combination of 40-degree temperatures and a severe drought that was turning its hill forests into small woods. The strongest winds in eight years rained pine trees burning like missiles as fires spread.
An investigation into the cause of the fires will not begin until the end of the fires. But the Greeks speculated that the owners were anxious to start the fires in order to clear protected forest lands, and residents and authorities disagreed that an evacuation had ever occurred. ordered.
Non-compliance
Homes in forested areas raised concerns even as the government, desperate for money as a result of the 2010 debt crisis, allowed homeowners to pay small fines to enter the regulation. The disregard for the rules and regulations that have often struck Greece may have contributed to a disaster that not everyone is convinced of.
Marathon Avenue, the main artery of the region and the road that leads to the road of the former messenger, is now spotted by companies like Easy Home, which sells prefabricated homes to avid Athenians of An affordable vacation home by the sea.
Closer to the coast, more stores sell blocks of cinder block, cords of wood, fireplaces and outdoor furniture. Many burnt houses nestled in the woods or on small ravines had the structure of these prefabricated houses, and sometimes illegally built.
"It is obvious that if you build a house in a forest, you could have a problem," said Dimitris Papaspiropoulos (49), who checked his vineyards in the avenue near Rafina. He said a house he said was illegally built on the burned road. "If they continue to build houses, they will continue to have problems."
Kaiti Milioni (55), who has a summer home in Mati, attributed poor urban planning to the disaster. "There are no streets or urban areas, there are no suitable roads, most houses were built in the 60s, these houses should have been demolished and rebuilt from scratch, "said Milioni. "We have made these requests to the Municipality of Marathon for years, but we have never received a response."
From 1991 to 2004, the region of Attica, which includes Athens and surrounding areas, lost 26% of its According to a study by Atlas, a group of local academics and geographers . They also found that more than 65% of the fires in the area started for unknown reasons.
Only 2.6% were attributed to natural causes. The arson is so common that it is not uncommon to blame the shepherds for burning acres of forest to create pastures for their sheep to graze.
"They let us die"
In July 2016, the Greek parliament passed a law allowing illegal home builders to pay a small fine during a two-year amnesty period. Many of these houses are now gone, as the dark trail of the fire cut the green trees of Neos Voutzas up to Mati, like a long shadow.
On Wednesday morning, police patrolled the upscale neighborhood of Neos Voutzas, where they said they had arrested four people for looting the night before. Some residents have started accusing the authorities of coming to their rescue too late, and of not communicating the danger properly.
"They let us die, the police and firefighters let us die," said Rozmari Koloktroni, 46. She said that before fleeing with her family to the sea, she saw police officers directing people who were fleeing to Mati, creating a deadly traffic jam. "That's why people are burning to death in their cars."
Evangelos Bournous, mayor of the port city of Rafina, acknowledged that there was no evacuation program in place but insisted that the authorities were telling people to go. Inside the City Hall on Wednesday, the first floor had been turned into a volunteer headquarters, where residents were taking water, bread, condensed milk, toilet paper and diapers for adults and babies. An altercation breaks out between people who collect supplies and others who accuse them of being in a neighboring township.
On the floor, Bournous meets the general secretary of the Greek Communist Party and other politicians. While he was leaving for a meeting in Athens with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, the mayor said that it would take another 15 days to regain power in the region. "We are trying to return to a normal life," he said. But the mayor, whose house was damaged, said he was "very anxious" about the possibility of finding bodies in the burned houses. "I think the total number will be much higher," he said.
The death toll, and the awful way many have died, has largely drawn the usually litigious Greeks together. "We do not find enough words, we are devastated," said Marianna Vardinoyannis, wife of Vardis Vardinoyannis, one of the richest and most powerful businessmen of Greece.
The Missing
Leaving the town hall after meeting Bournous, she stated that, beyond all the loss of life, the material damage was enormous and that she had told the mayor that her private foundation would send computers. and the gas that her husband's company produced. Flanked by representatives of the US Embassy and groups of the Greek diaspora, she said: "We will do everything we need."
But the first priority remained the consideration of all the missing. Vasilios Andriopoulos, who heads the Red Cross rescue operations, said his crew had discovered the 26 people at Mati who died a few meters from the sea. They were grouped into groups of four or five, usually around of a child. He said that the crew members were now examining the disappearance of nine-year-old girls who had been rescued at Rafina and whose kidnapping had caught the attention of Greece. But he said their main goal would be to search homes destroyed in the area, up to 2,500, and locate the many missing people who may have died.
Arion Zikes, a 30-year-old volunteer nurse "Sometimes it's hard to see people," 42-year-old Twafik Halil recalled in Rafina how fast the fire had arrived, obscuring the sky and and keeping his Egyptian fishing companions in the harbor until the police asked for their help in the search effort.He said that they had picked up dozens of survivors, and that he poured water into the eyes and mouth of exhausted people who came to the port by the hundreds.
Some of these survivors slowly returned home to examine the damage, and try to put things together. Alexandros Prokopiou (72 years old), returned to Mati to inspect his house, he was damaged, but his Simca 1965 sedan was now a mass of ash metal.
"It was white," says his wife, Magdalini Prokopiou (65), on the car "Like sugar". Alexandros Prokopiou shoved the bare springs of the seats with a car jack. "It was a nice car," he said. "C & # 39; was." – New York Times
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