Things left after the fire in Moria

On the night of September 9 of this year, the entire camp was burned to the ground. Moria was built during the refugee crisis in 2015, reports and reports from inside the camp have reported major health problems, violence and mental illness.

Over the years, the Moria refugee camp, together with the Turkey agreement, became Europe’s main migration solution. The number of refugees crossing the Mediterranean dropped dramatically, the number of people stranded on the Greek islands increased. Médecins Sans Frontières called Moria “an old-fashioned psychiatric hospital”, journalists “a powder keg about to explode”, refugees from a place that makes them want to return to their countries of origin.

Moria has a capacity for around 3,000 refugees, but at most 20,000 people lived in and around the camp.

Most of those who escaped the fire in September slept along rural roads, until the new camp was built eleven days later. If some belongings are left, they are difficult to access: the new temporary tent camp that has been built has stricter mobility restrictions and many choose to remain inside the camp. There are alarms for flooding in the tents, lack of hot water and lack of bathrooms.

The police also left their prints after the Moria fire. “We tried to seek refuge in a town or village, we just wanted to get away from the fire, to get to safety. But the police detained us with tear gas, the children still have pain in their eyes, ”says Tamadoar Albarho, 16, whom DN met a few days after the fire.

1,300 refugees have fled Lesbos since the fire, according to UNHCR.

A few days after the fire, DN came across those who had moved to the rural road, waiting for a new refugee camp. In recent years, more and more young children have come to Lesbos, and in September thousands of children took to the streets alongside Moria. Those we interviewed at the time had difficulty obtaining medicines, food and milk substitutes.

“I try to breastfeed, but I have almost no milk,” says Sidiqa Mohammadi, mother of a four-month-old baby.

“We haven’t eaten since Tuesday night. We didn’t have time to bring anything with us and they didn’t let us go and try to buy something to eat,” Tamadoar Albarho said on the Thursday after the September fire.

42% of those living in Moria were children under the age of 18 according to UNHCR. Many of them have been on the run their whole lives and lost their studies, and even so when they arrived in Greece. However, several voluntary organizations have been established over the years and have built temporary schools.

Moria was not formally a refugee camp, but a reception center. The idea was for people on the run to undergo a quick asylum examination and then be locked up. But many had lived in the camp for several years at the time of the fire, and several people had an asylum interview booked, in 2024.

Most of those who remain on Lesbos after the fire live in the temporary tent camp. The European Commission announced in late September that it wanted to build a new reception center on Lesbos, with “European standards, sustainable infrastructure and access to adequate care and hygiene.