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Greek floods Government criticized for disaster response



Following the onslaught of Storm Daniel from September 4 to 6, the fertile Thessaly plain in central Greece, responsible for over a quarter of the nation's agricultural output, now lies in desolation. The torrential rains - "extreme in terms of the amount of water that fell," according to experts - killed at least 15 people and inundated more than 75,000 hectares.

As rescue workers in the region continue to rescue residents who have been trapped in their homes without water or electricity since the severe weather began on September 5, the government has come under fire for its haphazard handling of yet another natural disaster, following this summer's fires, which claimed at least 16 lives and devastated thousands of hectares of forest.

In the Greek media, the desperate inhabitants of the village of Palamas, which now resembles a lake, denounce "the delays in rescue operations." "Help didn't arrive until 15 hours after the rain started. The meteorological services had warned us, but neither the civil protection nor the prefecture had organized boats to evacuate stranded people," a pensioner told television channel Open TV.

The deputy mayor of Palamas, Vaiou Bakavelou, also explained that "the state mechanism took a long time to get set up. Even after the disaster, for three days, we didn't even have drinking water, and nothing was properly organized to help the victims!"

According to reports from local residents, the Karditsa region only received SMS warnings from civil protection on the morning of Thursday, September 7, when the area had already been flooded for hours. "Unlike fires, floods can move more quickly, and evacuations are more difficult. It's not advisable to move around in order to avoid being swept away by the rising waters," explained the Greek civil protection.

The lack of coordination between the civil protection and the army was also singled out for criticism. According to the center-right newspaper Kathimerini, army helicopters were only mobilized late on the evening of Wednesday, September 6, one day after the crisis began. Out of the army's 12 Super Puma search-and-rescue aircraft, only four were flying over the Thessaly region, despite the fact that it was in the grip of a natural disaster unprecedented in the country: according to the Greek authorities, the amount of rain that fell in only 12 hours was equivalent to that recorded over the course of a year in Athens.

"Meteorologists had warned of the threat of severe flooding, but there was no timely intervention or coordination on the part of the government," said Stergios Kalpakis, the spokesman for the left-wing party SYRIZA, on Saturday, September 9. This main opposition party also pointed to delays in the implementation of flood plans that had already been voted on in 2018. In 2020, the same region, Karditsa, was hit by a violent storm nicknamed Ianos. At the time, the conservative Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis promised that flood protection infrastructure would be created and made almost €400 million available to the Thessaly prefecture and local administrations.

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