When the fire came, Kiriaki Alexiadou and her grandson dashed to their car and fled to safety. Their neighbors, who set out toward the sanctuary of the sea on foot, were burned alive.
Hundreds of residents and holidaymakers in the bucolic seaside village of Mati bolted with just the clothes on their backs as Greece’s worst-ever fires tore through pine forests around Athens this week.
At the mercy of the furious blaze and the pummeling wind, whether they lived or died was decided by the grotesque lottery of nature.
Photo: Reuters
“My husband said we had to leave with our seven-year-old grandson,” Alexiadou, 62, said. “We ran to the car as the pine cones were burning on the trees.”
Choking back the tears, she pointed to the charred skeleton of a house next to hers.
“The policewoman who lived there, her husband and their two children left on foot toward the sea, but they were trapped by this wall of flame,” she said.
At least 81 people are now known to have died in the fires that broke out late on Monday, ripping through the tinder-dry woods, and remorselessly engulfing homes and vehicles.
They include a newly married Irishman who had been on on honeymoon in Mati when his car was caught in the wildfires.
Although his wife, Zoe, managed to escape to a nearby beach, she was taken to hospital with burns, British media reported.
An unknown number of people remain missing.
As the smoke billowed over his property, Theodoros Christopoulos had seconds to decide whether to hunker down or flee toward the beach.
“There were five of us. I said: ‘Get back in the house.’ We closed the shutters — they’re aluminum — and I just thought whatever happens, happens,” he said. “The road was already blocked by cars trying to get out of Mati.”
Christopoulos was among the lucky ones — his home is largely undamaged and all five people who hid inside survived.
Many people in Mati sought refuge along the coves of the beach bordering the resort, where the detritus of the hasty escapes could be seen on Wednesday.
A sandal, a cardigan, a child’s toy abandoned among the pebbles were all that remained from what local resident Sabi Kissov called “a night of hell.”
The caretaker of a small house near the shore, he helped his employer, a 73-year-old cancer sufferer, down to the beach to wait out the inferno.
“There was at least 300 of us. The worst thing was the smoke, it hurt to breathe,” Kissov said.
Those huddled next to the sea were rescued by emergency workers in boats as the flames lit up the night sky.
Others were not as fortunate.
Just a few steps from Kissov’s home, the charred bodies of 26 people were found huddled together in the sarcophagus of a villa, the steep garden cliff face of the property apparently preventing their escape.
The fire’s cruel luck is streaked across the walls of some homes, which remained intact, despite being damaged.
Others were incinerated.
“We found everything when we got back, even the car, the cockerel and the dog,” said Kissov as he watered plants in his garden, a few meters from smouldering properties.
“You can’t explain it, why this house, why not that one ... it all happened so fast,” said Fani Antonini, fixing a toppled pot plant next to the smoking remains of what was once the family home. “At least I can still take a shower and offer you a drink, the water still works.”
One street over, Christos, 48, inspected the damage to his house.
A few years ago, he covered the walls with a fire-retardant substance and the home is virtually unscathed, but the house of his elderly neighbor is ruined.
“That’s another thing we’ve lost,” he said, smiling grimly. “It was paradise here.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in