The two Austrians who were on the Pelion peninsula in Greece, which was badly hit by the heavy storms, are still missing. “The Austrian Embassy in Athens and the Honorary Consulate in Volos are in constant contact with the Greek authorities to provide the best possible support in the search,” the Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
According to the portal “ekathimerini.com”, the two Austrians are a newlywed couple from Graz whose holiday home was washed away in the Pelion region on Tuesday. Accordingly, the couple fled to a hill to escape the waters. They have been missing or unreachable ever since. At least four other people are missing, according to the AP news agency.
Six people died
In the Greek disaster area, dozens of people are still trapped in flooded villages, and rescuers are still trying to get residents to safety. A total of almost 2,000 people have been rescued so far, a fire brigade spokesperson told the news channel ERTnews on Friday. The number of deaths remained at six on Friday morning.
Because many villages are still surrounded by water and cut off from the environment, the situation is out of control. The Greek weather service Meteo published a map showing the extent of the flooding. The situation is particularly dramatic in the municipality of Karditsa, which resembles a large lake. In total, about 72,000 hectares were under water, the meteorologists said.
River five meters above normal level
In the early hours of Friday morning, the alarm was also raised for the town of Larisa – there the Pinios River reached a water level of 9.5 meters, while normally it is about four meters, as the daily newspaper “Kathimerini” wrote. Firefighters evacuated several parts of the city that would be affected by river flooding.
The Greek weather agency EMY declared on Friday that storm ‘Daniel’ had passed. It had settled over the central Greek region of Thessaly since Monday and lasted until Thursday. The rainfall from “Daniel” exceeded anything previously measured by Greek meteorologists. In some places, more than 700 liters of water per square meter fell in less than 24 hours.
“Granary” under water
The damage is still difficult to predict: the port city of Volos is experiencing massive infrastructure damage and is struggling with mountains of mud washed into the streets by water. The entire region of Thessaly is considered the ‘breadbasket’ of Greece; most fields here are flooded, some of which are meters high.
Source: Krone
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