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Extreme rainfall and flooding have claimed the lives of at least 10 people in central and northern Greece after Storm Daniel swept across the region for three consecutive days, causing billions of euros of damage, destroying properties and leaving large areas without electricity and water.
Hundreds of people, waiting to be evacuated as floodwaters exceeded 2 metres in some areas, were found stranded in their homes on Friday. Since the floods started on Tuesday, more than 1,900 rescues have taken place in Thessaly, the main region hit by the storm, and the wider area, according to the fire department, while more than 6,000 calls for help were recorded.
Prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited the region on Friday, reassuring local authorities that “we will do everything humanly possible” to help affected areas. He also stressed that he would mobilise “whatever resources are available” from the EU to assist the recovery operation.
The floods followed two weeks of large-scale wildfires in northeastern Greece, intensifying concerns about extreme weather patterns caused by climate change across southern Europe. The wildfires were the largest recorded in the EU to date, according to the EU’s Copernicus monitoring service. Storm Daniel also hit areas of Turkey and Bulgaria.
Kostas Agorastos, governor of Thessaly, told the state broadcaster ERT that the damage caused by the storm was valued at more than €2bn.
“The recording of the damages will begin immediately [as will] compensation for the houses that have been destroyed”, Mitsotakis said at a meeting with mayors in Karditsa, one of the worst-hit towns in the region.
According to Greek officials the rainfall measured over one 12-hour period — more than 700 tonnes per acre — was nearly double the amount that typically falls on Athens in one year.
More evacuation orders were issued on Friday as authorities sent alerts to mobile phones in the area, warning that the Pineios River was overflowing. Parts of Larissa, Thessaly’s administrative capital and largest city which is situated 20km from the river, were already starting to flood.
The Thessalian plain is Greece’s main agricultural breadbasket and accounts for more than 22 per cent of the country’s agricultural production. Much of the region’s agricultural resources have now been destroyed.
“I don’t think we have realised the magnitude of this disaster yet,” said Professor Efthymios Lekkas, a disaster management expert, on ERT. Significant deposits of clay and silt, up to half a metre thick, would prevent the cultivation of crops for the foreseeable future, he said, adding that it would take at least five years for the plain to be fertile again.
