Two students died and another three are hospitalized in critical condition due to fumes from makeshift brazier. According to Greek media, all five were found at the home they were renting by another student who had come to visit them on Thursday afternoon. As the students were not answering she called the landlord. She opened the door with a passkey to make the tragic finding: two dead, three were found to be unconscious.
The students had made a makeshift brazier apparently from a cut off water heater. It looks that the two renting the house, had invited friends for a grill meal. Allegedly they put the fire inside also to heat the home.
The landlord told reporters, that the students did not use heating oil due to economic difficulties. And that they occasionally were using electric heaters through the cold winter days.
“Beginning of the winter, they told me to buy heating oil only for us,” the landlord told private ANT1 TV Friday morning. “If it turns very cold, we’ll see what we’ll do.”
The five, aged between 21-22, were studying at the professional college (TEI) of Larissa and had moved there from several Greek cities like Athens, Ioannina and Chania.
The three seem to have escaped the danger however remain in critical condition with doctors to examine any possible brain damage due to poor oxygenation.
A necropsy will investigate the exact causes for the death of the two.
The tragic incident, occurred by a combination of money shortage and inexperience, shocked the public opinion.
Greek Communist Party (KKE) issued a statement noting that “the incident dramatically highlights the criminal character of the government-EU policies that made heating a luxury and forcing the average family to use dangerous forms of heating like in many decades before.”
50% tax hikes in heating oil forced the majority of the Greek households to use alternative ways of heating through fireplaces and brazier.
