Two months after being ravaged by torrential rains, the town of Vlochos, in Thessaly, in central Greece, is nothing more than a ghost village. Built below a river, the houses were engulfed for several days by water and mud at the beginning of September. At a street crossing, geese rub shoulders with stray cats. But the residents all left the place. The apocalyptic landscape suggests sofas, stuffed animals or slippers soaked in water and hanging on the roofs, transported by the violence of the catastrophe. Gardens, cotton or corn fields now resemble swamps. The area is infested with mosquitoes and flies.
Described by experts as a phenomenon “extreme in terms of the amount of water that fell”Storm Daniel, which hit Greece from September 4 to 7, left 17 dead in Thessaly, the fertile plain of Greece, which represents more than 15% of the country’s agricultural production, covering nearly 73,000 hectares, according to the Copernicus emergency management service of the European Commission, and killed more than 80,000 animals, mainly sheep.
In Vlochos, wearing his boots and plastic gloves, Manthos Kolonas sets about cleaning his garage and is saddened by the extent of the damage: “We are the only ones putting our hands in the mud. The State is completely absent. How to come back to live here? The houses are all moldy, some roads are cut, the electricity and water networks have been destroyed. Nearly two months after the storm, the future is still very uncertain…”
Like many villagers, Mr. Kolonas had cotton fields around the hamlet that were completely submerged. “It was the time when we had to pick the harvest. But now we are all unemployed, without housing, and for how long? We don’t know when we will get state aid or when we will be able to cultivate the land again.”explains the sixty-year-old, who rented an apartment 40 kilometers away where he lives with his two daughters and his parents.
Ten minutes by car from Vlochos, in the town of Palamas, Katerina Kokalara, 45, was relocated to a school gymnasium, like twenty-seven other people. For two months, she has been sleeping on a camp bed due to lack of means to rent a studio. “I lost everything, my cotton and wheat fields, my car, my house. I don’t have any money saved. When I left, I told myself it would be temporary. But it is too dangerous to stay in Vlochos, we are afraid that, with the first rains of winter, a new tragedy will occur »she said, sighing.
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