With full power storm “Geryon” stroke the beach town of Kinetta in West Attica in the night from Sunday to Monday causing unprecedented destruction. Dozens of calls to Fire Service to evacuate people from flooded homes. One 44-year-old man has been reportedly missing.
“We heard a loud noise and within minutes the doors broke and the waters rushed into our homes,” an elderly man told media. The water quickly reached a height of 1.60-1.80 meters. “We managed to go to neighbors’ house that stands higher than our, so we were saved,” the man added still in shock of what he and his family experienced last night.
Another man said that the water in their home reached 2 meters and that the family rushed to the roof top. “We had nowhere else to go,” the man stressed adding that they called the fire brigades and they “saved us.”
The daylight reveals in full the dramatic situation.
Thousands of trees are blocking the roads.
Homes are flooded with muddy waters.
Vehicles and cars swept away.
Power columns were broken.
Infrastructure was largely damaged.
The sea cannot be distinguished from the shore.
The Fire Service received over 100 calls for help: evacuate people trapped in their homes, pump waters from flooded homes and businesses, cut trees to free the road network.
Twenty people were rescued, some of them had hypothermia, the chief of local Fire Service said.
Video: rescue of elderly couple, one woman.
A family with a 5-year-old child was trapped in her home and could not come out as doors and windows were blocked by mud waters and rubble. firefighters rescued them from a lifethreatening situation.
The disaster came after the torrential rain flooded the local stream and the rushing waters sought a way out through Kinetta, At the same time, tones of rubble and trees came down from the mountain.
The forest on Gerania mountain was burned down in the big fire in July 2018. There was nothing left on the mountain to hold and absorb the huge volume of rainwater.
The trees and branches swept into Kinetta, where reportedly burned trees that were cut down last year and still stored on the mountain. The trees were neither removed nor tied down, media report.
A 44-year-old man who was reportedly missing has contacted his family, media report.
