EDITOR’S NOTE (Nick Stamatakis). This is atrocious! The National Highway of Greece, yes, the one which connects Athens to Thessaloniki, was flooded and looked like a river for over 50 miles!! Unbelievable!! This is only the 5th major calamity (or 6th? We lost count!) to hit Greece in the last couple of years. They all have the same denominator: The undescribable level of mismanagement by the government officials in every part of their duties… Please do not get me wrong: this doesn’t have to do only with Mitsotakis, whose mafia family (by the strict definition of the term “mafia” – and I have to know as I studied the phenomenon as a doctoral student in the Social Sciences) but with all the mafia families, big and small, dominate Greece’s politics for the last two centuries. They never perform minimally in their duties and even canceled the laws regarding “the liability of ministers” – so they can never be prosecuted!! Outrageous!! Corruption and bribery come first. If anything runs well, it has basically to do with the “philotimo” of lower-level administrators and employees…
The resignation of one minister (Miltiadis Varvitsiotis – son of another “family”) for the naval disaster in the port of Piraeus is not enough… Mitsotakis himself had to resign, and the Parliament had to form a new multi-party government that would hire able technocrats, people with business experience, to run all ministries…
As it always happened in modern Greek history, generations and generations of capable, smart, responsible, educated young Greeks take the road to emigration to make Germany, Australia, Canada, and America rich as the poor homeland is left to the hands of the Mafiosi, the predators…
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Daniel storm: The national highway turned into an impassable river – See photos
The traffic ban remains in force on the Aegean Motorway (from Maliakos to Imathia) due to extensive flooding in the Gyrtoni-Sykouri area (X.Th. 366) following “Daniel” storm.
According to the update, traffic is possible in the Thessaloniki – Leptokarya section and from the Nikais Larissa interchange to Athens and vice versa.
See photos of the situation on the Aegean Motorway:
Problems continued in the flooded Larissa region on Monday, despite signs that the water level in the Pinios River was starting to subside.
The situation remained difficult in the surrounding villages, with huge swathes of the countryside still covered by mud and flood water as operations to reach trapped residents continued.
Several neighbourhoods within the city of Larissa remained flooded, with the level of the water undiminished, while the damage is extensive and there are public health fears due to pollution, including of the water table.
The state of the roads, meanwhile, creates serious problems for those in villages that need urgent hospital treatment.
Following the discovery of another dead body, identified as that of a missing 42-year-old man, in the Pagasetic Gulf on Sunday, the death toll from the floods has risen to 15, while two people, a couple from Austria, are still missing.
On a bright note, it appears that the median barricades kept water from going to the other side of the highway… 🙂