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After hitting parts of central and western Greece, meteorologists have predicted that a rare Mediterranean hurricane is heading south towards the island of Crete.
Authorities struggling to contain the impact of the cyclone, a so-called Mediterranean hurricane called Medicane Ianos, said two people had died and at least one was missing as torrential rain and hurricane-force winds left a trail of destruction.
“I call on citizens to remain vigilant while this phenomenon lasts,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said in a tweet expressing his condolences for those who lost their lives. “What prevails now is the protection of life. All affected areas will have immediate support ”.
From the western Peloponnese and the Ionian Islands, where widespread flooding and power outages prompted the government to declare a state of emergency on Friday, the storm ripped through central Thessaly, uprooting trees, knocking down bridges and blocking roads. Some 5,000 properties were said to have been flooded in the city of Karditsa alone.
Emergency services reported receiving more than 2,500 calls for assistance from people trapped in flooded homes and cars. The Greek fire service said it had rescued nearly 1,000 people. In Trikala, a man survived by clinging to a log to escape being overwhelmed by the waters of a stream.
One of the victims was described as an old woman who had died when her house filled with water in Farsala in Thessaly. Later, a 63-year-old pastor was discovered dead near a hospital in Karditsa. The ethnic Albanian man is believed to have been searching for his son who had disappeared in the storm, but was found by the man and firefighters.
A 40-year-old woman was among those missing, though local media later said her car had been recovered by rescuers. The vehicle is believed to have been washed away by flooding after the woman, ignoring police advice, attempted to cross a flooded road near an area where a bridge crosses a river.
Farmers in central Greece described crops and greenhouses as totally destroyed by the storm. Countless properties have been damaged, including shops.
Train services between Athens and the country’s northern capital Thessaloniki were suspended on Saturday. Electricity workers were still struggling to restore power to the popular Ionian islands of Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Ithaca and Lefkada more than a day after the outages. At least five ships had sunk off the islands in seas whipped by winds of more than 60 mph before making landfall Thursday night. Waves off the coast of the western Peloponnese were reported to have reached 7 meters in height on Friday.
The cyclone, a by-product of the climate emergency according to experts, struck the Attica region in greater Athens early Saturday, although there were no reports of damage.
In the afternoon, Greece’s deputy civil protection minister Nikos Hardalias said it appeared to be heading south and would likely hit Arcadia, Leonidio and Argolis in the Peloponnese before moving to the island of Kythera and Crete.
Forecasters said the hurricane was expected to pick up speed as it crossed the sea. Warmer sea surface temperatures in the Mediterranean would also make the wind speed more intense. Tropical-style storms in the region are rare, but are expected to increase, along with other extreme weather events, due to climate change.
“Such intense phenomena are related to the climate crisis,” said Professor Ethymios Lekkas from the faculty of geology and geoenvironment at the University of Athens. “[They] they are expected to occur with increasing frequency. “
Greece was hit by a similar storm in 2018. A year earlier, flash floods left 25 dead and hundreds homeless in western Athens. The mayor of Mandra, the worst affected area, described the disaster at the time as “biblical.” Many of the victims were older people whose bodies were later found inside flooded homes.
