A week after the tragedy in Athens wildfires in East Attica and following an immense public pressure, the government obviously instructed the announcement about the number of missing people.
The Fire Service announced in a statement published on Sunday evening that the number of officially missing people is 25.
“It is people who have been declared as missing to the Fire Service by their relatives,” the statement said.
The Forensics Department has conducted identification of 59 bodies, while the identification of another 28 bodies is due.
Τhe number of those who died in the hospitals is 4, the statement added.
Now many wonder:
- if 59 bodies + 28 = 87 + 4 dead in hospitals ⇒ 91 dead
The is high possibility that the 25 missing will be identified among the 28 bodies.
Why isn’t the number 28 but 25?
It’s all about semantics. Missing is someone who has been declared as such. The rest are probably the bodies of 3 people who have died in the wildfires, their bodies have been recovered and taken to morgue, but nobody has declared them as such.
Soon there was more confusion as many media websites spoke of more than 100 dead – they added the number of missing to the number dead (whether in the fires or in the hospital) – and the situation got out of control.
Short time after the Fire Service issued an additional statement urging media to not add the number of dead to the number of missing before identification of the rest of the bodies is concluded.
In the second statement the Fire Service said “declarations for missing people were 84, of those 59 have been identified and the remaining are 25.”
The Fire Service had urged relatives to declare beloved ones with whom had no contact in a special phone number.
At the end of this ongoing confusion fact is:
- the Fire Service had 84 declarations for missing people
- the Forensics Dept has 87 bodies
- and four people have died in the last days in the hospitals.
The Fire Service told media it is not in position to give the exact number of dead.
The Service has not published a list of the 25 people.
More KTG reports about the Athens wildfire here.
