Producers from the municipal unit of Vegoritida and from other areas of the municipality of Edessa speak of total destruction and damage to crops, which extend over 50,000 acres in total, speaking to APE-MPE about the consequences of yesterday’s hailstorm in the area.

The hailstorm was also combined with a windstorm, significantly damaging much of the plant capital and leading them to economic extermination, as they say.

According to the testimonies of the producers, who have flooded social media with photos of the damage their crops have suffered, the passage of yesterday’s bad weather was particularly damaging in the entire region of Vegoritida – in Arnissa, Panagitsa, Zervi, Agios Athanasios and Xanthoia, some areas of Almopia, but also in the villages of Kerasia, Karydia, Nissi and Korifi of the municipality of Edessa.

The devastation caused by yesterday’s hailstorm was mentioned in a post on social media by the deputy mayor for Rural Development of the municipality of Edessa, Yiannis Tsepkentzis, a professor at the University of Western Macedonia: “Witnesses once again to the climate collapse. Short-term and high-intensity weather phenomena are what we will encounter in the coming years.”

In fact, as Mr. Chepkentzis mentions, in the case of yesterday’s hailstorm, in addition to the universal destruction of the fruits, we also had damage to plant capital.” He explains that producers should spend on plant protection, not only for fruits, but also for trees, in order to limit future problems.

In this context, he underlines that the need to adapt the mechanism at the European Union level is imperative, while at the local level he emphasizes that “we monitor and contribute to the smooth and fast implementation of the required procedures”.

The hail, the size of a walnut, fell for at least half an hour yesterday afternoon relentlessly destroying crops of cherries, peaches, nectarines, apples and apricots, as reported by the producer from Kali Pella, Thanasis Antoniou, speaking to APE-MPE. “The mountainous mass of the municipality of Edessa is in a state of emergency, since yesterday’s bad weather destroyed everything in its path, leading to despair the growers, who will not only eventually not sell their products, since they were completely destroyed in most cases, but those who have to pay off their debts to third parties will have to pay from their own pockets” he points out.

“It was raining hailstones the size of walnuts for about 15 minutes. We were destroyed” declares the president of the Agricultural Cooperative of Arnissa, George Papadopoulos and adds: “the hailstorm was accompanied by strong winds and thus caused great damage to the plant capital, breaking branches and pillars and even tearing anti-hail nets. We ask for the immediate intervention of the state and for ELGA’s agronomists to start the assessment process as soon as possible”.

“The damage to the 65 acres of cherries and 130 acres of apples that we grow in the Panagitsa area is 100%” says, for his part, the producer Orpheas Nikolaidis, who estimates the amount of his own damages – with a first estimate – to 250,000 euros.

According to the producers, from tomorrow the ELGA assessors will go to the places of the disasters in order to record them so that the cultivators, following the process now familiar to them, can be compensated.