A nightmare on the island of Crete hit by torrential rainfall: people trapped in their flooded homes, roads turned into rivers. Fire fighters rescue people, even “frogmen” of EMAK Rescue Team participate in Search and Rescue operations in swollen rivers.
Tons of rushing waters piled up parked vehicles, or swept others to the sea.
Especially hit is the area of Hersonissos at the Heraklio Peninsula.
Video: Koutouloufari
Torrential rains and sporadic thunderstorms started short before the down, the rain height has already reached 100 millimeters.
Among the areas with the most floods are are Anisaras, Analipsi, Koutouloufari, Gournes and Stalida.
Streams and rivers have swollen flooding roads, yards, basements and ground floors, mud and other material brought with the water make access impossible.
Video: Stalida
Video: Sea front at Heraklio Municipality
In the area of Gournes the river has swelled and swept vehicles into the sea. One car is seen with alarm lights on floating in the sea.
By order to Hersonissos Mayor, schools in municipality will remain closed.
However, there are reports that children are trapped in a private elementary school in Heraklio and men from the Fire Service are on the way to trasnfer them homes.
There are reports that in some homes the water reached up to 2 meters, and eyewitnesses said that they saw water coming out from houses.
Landslides occurred in Spilia, from Agios Sozontas to Peza and in other parts of the provincial road network.
The Fire Brigade has received over 100 calls for rescue and pumping water from flooded homes and businesses. A mother and her underage child were rescued from a flooded basement home in Analipsi, a man was rescued from a touristic facility.
Tourists in a hotel who could not even exit their rooms due to floods were also rescued.
So far, there are no reports about missing persons or injuries.
Tuesday noon, the Fire Service called on people to move to higher places.
It is the third time in less than 10 days that the island of Crete is hit by severe weahter phenomena.
Greece’s National Meteorological Service issued a weather warning about heavy rainfall on Crete and South Dodecanese. The extreme weather is forecast to continue until Wednesday afternoon. More detail here.
sources: cretalive, creta24, ekriti, ekriti
These floods are occurring in many regions all ove the world. Partly at fault are the real estate and construction industries who never consider anything except a fast profit cutting down all growth that holds the soil and absorbes rain and cementing everything over. Authorities seem to always consider them as once-in-a-hundred-years events and then do nothing. Anyone who isn’t blind (or a liar) and who is at least 25 years old sees that the climate is definitely changing and measures must be taken to build containment and diversion structures for these events, WHICH ARE GOING TO HAPPEN EVERY COUPLE OF YEARS, not once in a century! These storms remind me of São Paulo Brazil where the first flood was recorder by a priest around 1580 and every year various neighborhoods are still flooded 440 years later! Seem like it was Mark Twain who said that everybody talks about the weather , but nobody does anything about it. He’s still right.
Spot on!