A 65-year-old German citizen died after inhaling fumes from a makeshift brazier. According to local media, the man had started the coal fire in order to heat his home in Pompia, a village in Messaras by Herakleio on the island of Crete.
He was found dead in his home on Tuesday. A neighbor had gone to his home to check for him, following his son request. The son lives in Germany and had no contact to his father.
The body is taken to the University Hospital of Herakleio for autopsy.
Both the police and the coroner who arrived in the man’s home suggested that he had died from the fumes of the brazier.
The German national was living in Pompia in the last few years.
“The first dead of the the winter in Crete,” write local media cretalive,gr.
Several people have lost their lives in the years of the economic crisis in an effort to heat their homes with makeshift braziers.
That nice semi-transparent flame made by the burning charcoal is not all CO2, but CO (carbon monoxide) as well. CO is similar to O2 (oxygen) and is taken up by the hemoglobin in blood as if it were oxygen, thus suffocating the person in a very insidious way. Charcoal fires only out on the veranda of in the back yard!