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.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not