Storm weather BORA hit the island of Rhodes with heavy rainfalls wreaking havoc and despair. Homes and businesses have been flooded, large areas turned into mud fields and and people were trapped in their cars and their homes.
Authorities imposed a 24-hour traffic ban until all the roads have checked, while residents and visitors received one more alert message, the third in less than 12 hours, as another wave of heavy rain is expected.
Kindergartens and schools will be closed on Monday, December 2, 2024.
In just a few hours, 300 mm of rain fell on Rhodes, that is a volume equivalent to the volume of a month’s rain, turning roads into rivers, causing landslides and damaging large parts of the road network.
Extensive damages have been reported in the villages of Ialysos, Kremasti, Maritsa, Damatria and Paradeisi.
Residents and visitors spent nightmarish hours trying to save themselves in the darkness of the night as they were calling for help to be evacuated from their homes where rainwater and mud was entering.
Authorities and the Fire Service received over 650 calls for assistance to evacuate people from flooded homes and vehicles trapped in the waters.
Short before midnight, they had received a message to evacuate basements and ground-floor residences.
Media reported that in some homes the water reached a height of 1.5 meter.
Teams of Municipality and the Civil Protection, volunteers and citizens have been trying all night and continue to struggle with helping people: families with underage children, elderly…
Emergency crews from the Special Disaster Response Unit (EMAK) and forest rescue units were dispatched overnight to Rhodes, equipped with pumps and boats to assist with evacuations.
Ialyssos
Especially affected is Ialyssos as the local stream was overflooded. Beyond the rainfall that caused the floods, it is reportedly also the hydrographic network, which is inadequate because urbanization has taken place and certain branches of the stream have disappeared, they no longer exist.
There are at least 10-15 luxurious structures, which have occupied half of the riverbed, newsit.gr reported citing the head of Earthquake Planning and protection organization Efthymios Lekkas.
“This is not a matter of construction, it is not construction of recent years. We had seen it since 2013, where about five meters of reinforced concrete fences are exactly, I am specifically mentioning in the middle of the riverbed”, Lekkas stated characteristically.
RED ALERT FOR RHODES
Local authorities have already submitted a request to the central government requesting that the island is declared in “state of emergency.”
Rhodes is in a state of red alert, Mayor Alexandros Koliadis, and the regional governor of the South Aegean, Giorgos Hadjimarkos, stressed on Sunday. They made a dramatic appeal to residents to stay home for safety.
The mayor and the regional governor, immediately after the meeting of the civil protection coordination body on Sunday, described what the island experienced last night, when it rained non-stop for over 16 hours:
The damage are enormous: a bridge [in Faliraki] collapsed, a road surface gave way, landslides and enormous damage to private properties.
In at least 6 cases, rescue workers who were attempting to free our fellow citizens had to be extricated. The rescues took place under extremely dangerous conditions.
A committee will be established to record the damages for the immediate compensation of those affected.
From Monday, December 2, the platform will open for fellow citizens to submit requests for compensation, even for those who were forced to stay outside their homes.
It is characteristic that the people in Ialyssos who were forced to leave their homes were transferred to a school in the area, or were accommodated free of charge in hotels owned by their fellow citizens.
The Mayor and the regional governor did not stop urging people to stay inside, as there are signs of violations of the 112 Traffic Ban order, as well as some businesses being open today, Sunday.
KTG understands that there no reports of injuries or fatalities, so far.
