Trial for the Eye: “Complete absence of the authorities while the fishermen were teaching humanity” witnesses testified

“Fire, Police, District, there was no one. Municipality nowhere. No update” testify the witnesses in the trial for Mati, at the same time that, as one witness said, “The fishermen gave us a great lesson in humanity”.

The stories of absolute horror and agony for the lives that were hanging in the balance continue to unfold in the Three-member Plemmeliodikai, where the witnesses put one by one the pieces of the puzzle of the biggest disaster that the country has experienced in recent years.

“It was at the corner of the house, ten minutes from the sea,” testified Angeliki Gavaki, who lost her 46-year-old mother in Mati. “She was hit by the heat wave in the corner of the house. The fire hit her, she didn’t make it… She was 46 years old, the youngest, she could have run if she had been warned. He could have been spared … Why didn’t anyone tell them anything? Why didn’t anyone inform?”

The witness, looking at the judges, asked for justice for her mother and all the other people who died in a horrible way: “I wish justice would be served, it was unfair that he died in this way. Nobody deserves this…”

Demosthenes Vonikopoulos lost his brother, while his family was also in danger. The witness described the frantic search for his brother. Testifying in court, he described the hours of agony he lived through when they were looking for him without knowing that he was one of those who in the inferno of the fire lost his life by drowning in the sea where he fled to be saved. As the witness reported, their wife and daughter were miraculously saved as the fire reached outside their house: “The fishermen gave us a great lesson in humanity. They rounded up my daughter. I went to thank them and they didn’t accept even a token consideration.” Moved, he described how his daughter after her experience in Mati has psychological problems, “she can’t even see a fire in a fireplace”, as he said while crying while adding: “We are resurrecting her step by step”. Mr. Vonikopoulos also said that his daughter did not want to come to court. “People should have been notified to leave in time, there should have been an organization. No bells, no sirens. Nothing. Mistakes were made, they didn’t do what was necessary to save the world,” concluded the witness.

The wife of Mr. Vonikopoulos, Eleni Koutsikou, testified that she was looking for her daughter in the sea: “Shout with all my might. I couldn’t find her. I was swept in… There was a lot of commotion. Five hundred people were there… I swam for four hours. When I got to the shore the heat wave took us and it was burning our hair. We couldn’t breathe, we blacked out.” The witness emphasized that she learned afterwards that her brother-in-law drowned and that her child was saved after four hours at sea. “He swam for three to four hours. Fire, Police, District there was no one. Municipality nowhere, no information. The world panicked. We would swim and go out a bit to look for our people. There were burnt people swimming… When we got out to Rafina there wasn’t a single bus. We were trying with each other. I had nothing with me … I was searched for and found by a cousin of mine who was returning to Rafina from Tinos”.

The witness referred to a relative of hers, a paraplegic who was trapped when the woman helping him was unable to carry him to the sea and left him at home on a wet sheet. “The fire passed over him, his hand was burned … He lived for six months … There were people who risked their lives to pass through the fires, but the Police were nowhere to be seen. The authorities were absent. His son found him, violating the prohibitions, and took him to the hospital alone, in his car.”

RES-EMP

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