Trial for the Eye: Anger at the lack of measures for the deadly fire – The witnesses, relatives of the victims are shocked

Reporting: Ioanna Mandrou

“Some should have been in prison and others should have been immediately removed from their positions”, was the conclusion of Aristides Cheroubeim, whose testimony shocked everyone in court at the trial for the deadly fire in Mati. THE witness who lost his mother, his sister and her two minor five-year-old children spoke about what he experienced dramatically while searching for his dead until the moment he found himself in the painful position of identifying their bodies.

“I hope that no one will experience what I and my family experienced. They don’t know what it’s like to pick up half-burnt toys from the garden. You have to evaluate what of the girls’ things, what you should throw away and what you should give,” the witness said, adding at another point in his testimony: “Those of us who stayed behind are living a torture. There are people here like me that you have to protect us, we are the victims Mr. President.”

Beginning his testimony in court, Mr. Cherubim stated: “I have lived through all the fires in the summers. There was always a fire engine parked. On that day there was none. Marathon Avenue was considered a fire zone. All these summers that we have been there, we have struggled to clear the dry grass. I live in Athens. The mayor of Rafina – Pikermiou had appeared on television and said that there was no need to evacuate, he even asked us not to move around so as not to obstruct the fire brigade. There were helicopters that never took off. There was time to all services to alert the people but they were watching the people burn. They said that the fire moves towards Dionysus. The fire was burning high until that time…”

The witness referred to the communications he had with his mother after seeing on television that a fire had broken out. “I was told by my mother whom I contacted at 6:30 in the afternoon that they saw flames. I told her “get up and leave”. I didn’t catch a conversation because every second was critical. They managed to leave within the next five minutes. There they met some other people. A couple’s car caught fire and soon my family and I were burned,” he said.

During his testimony, Mr. Cherubim described the endless efforts he made by calling the relevant agencies and hospitals to find out about the fate of his people. “I called the fire department countless times… At one point I called the Coast Guard but after countless times they never answered. Direct Action told me that it is not competent and to take to the police station of Nea Makri. From there they told me to take to the Nea Makris Health Center, the hospitals that were collecting the bodies” the witness said and continuing his testimony he emphasized: “As I learned later from a volunteer around 9:000 a group of reserve commandos offered to help the Fire Department for to search for the bodies. Disorganization and total lack of coordination. All this theater played out while they knew that there were dead…”.

Mr. Cherubim then spoke of the times he was called upon to identify the bodies of his own people. As he said, he managed to locate the bodies of his relatives late at night. “Around 2 o’clock in the morning, the house was open, I didn’t find anyone inside, my sister’s car was at the house, I saw at 50 meters some bodies covered with a white sheet” he said characteristically to continue: “Directly opposite was a couple completely burnt in plain sight, without even being covered. The police told me that under the sheet were two women and two children. I realized that they were my relatives. But I was told they were young women. I asked to make an identification, there was a difficulty because on the one hand they didn’t have gloves and on the other hand they said they didn’t want to disturb the scene of the crime. Finally we made it, I recognized my sister, my mother and one child, the other was badly burned. The bodies were white… They extinguished the children with a fire extinguisher, is this allowed? This is what the police wrote in their report, that they found the bodies and emptied the patrol car’s fire extinguisher. My sister’s purse was intact and I asked for her ID. Coroner came at 12 noon. The death certificate says 12.30 noon. The collection of the bodies took place at 7 pm. This was done because some people in the fire department thought it was right to directly award a specific funeral home for 62,000 euros despite the fact that other funeral homes had been offered for free.

Referring to the attitude of the State, in those hours, Mr. Cherubim characterized “theater» the meeting at the coordination center of the fire brigade led by Alexis Tsipras. “It was terribly hypocritical and insulting,” he said. “We spent 4.5 years, where the case file was a ball and all they did was to change the Criminal Code and make more favorable sentences for the accused. The only good thing was the creation of 112. 104 people had to leave to make 112…”, he added.

Concluding his testimony, Mr. Cherubim said: “Today we came here to do a trial but we don’t know how many victims there are. The victims are 104. I am impressed that no one is talking about the victims who have not been identified. For 4, 5 years, the case file for Mati became a ball. I am not blaming your court but the legal framework. The accused are innocent until proven guilty but there are people like us who are the victims. Some are more to blame and some less. Some should be in jail, but everyone should be out the next day.”

Then on the witness stand, he stepped up woman who lost her sister and niece in the deadly fire, while miraculously she and her nephew survived. “There was no one, everything was burning, there was not even a bird flying,” said the witness, then describing how she was trapped in her home in N. Vouja when the garage door was blocked and she was unable to leave. “At 10pm there was a knock on my door and it was from the Alpha TV station. They asked me “are you alive?” I say “yes” and I went down and saw charred people in the cars, just their ashes. Outside the houseand there was not even a flying bird until 11:30″, said the witness and then described how her sister and niece, who lived in a neighboring house, left after being urged by the police in the afternoon of that day without, however, managing to escape the flames.

Her nephew, according to the witness, was the one who found them seriously injured on the street and when he tried to take them to the hospital, the police gave him instructions and sent him into the fire. “My sister she was screaming on fire from the pains. My nephew didn’t listen to the police, he went instead to Marathon, took them to “Evangelism”, where they were intubated and told to wait for them to die. By luck I was saved, I could have burned inside the house if the garage door had not been closed or I would have left in the car and burned like my sister and my niece!

The fight for salvation

A little earlier, Alexandros Floros testified about the superhuman efforts he and his family made to save themselves.

As the witness said, together with his relatives they managed to reach the coast. They could see thick smoke from the side of the mountain, while people kept coming to the beach and visibility was decreasing.

“We entered the sea, at some point we lost land, we couldn’t see. We were swimming, trying to stay together, the wind getting stronger as time went by. We tried to stay close to each other. Sparks, pine cones were falling into the water. At one point they made things too difficult. We could hear the planes and we thought they were coming to save us, we called for help. At one point my wife says, “that was…”, Mr. Floros testified. As he said they were starting to lose their courage and were trying to stay together by swimming not knowing where they were heading.

“After many hours we saw some lights. We had arrived near the port of Rafina, there were ship lights. A fishing boat was coming. He shone a flashlight on us, then a coil. My wife had hypothermia, the children had turned blue. They gave us blankets. I saw a grandfather floating in the sea… They pulled up a woman, resuscitated her, she didn’t make it… They took us to the shore, from the shock we didn’t remember to call someone of ours… We couldn’t see well, on the shore they seemed some ambulances. There we saw black plastic bags that were being closed… If we stayed inside the house we would be burned alive. It was such a heat load that the irons melted…” he said with a trembling voice and added that throughout his attempt to save himself and his family he did not see a single representative of the authorities.

“The only uniformed person I saw was a port guard at 11 at night in the port of Rafina,” he said.

Tomorrow, among others, Mrs. Voukaki Varvara, who lost her husband Grigoris Fitros and their two children in the deadly fire, is expected to testify in court.

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