“People died helpless. They knew that by their omissions they were putting people’s lives at risk.” said the technical advisor of the victims of the deadly fire in Mati, Andrianos Gourbatsis, in response to questions, once again igniting the issue of whether some of the 21 defendants should be held accountable for a felony.

The lieutenant general of the Fire Department, who is testifying for the third day before the Three-member Misdemeanor Court, in response to questions from the victims’ advocates, testified that there was negligence on the part of those responsible at various levels and emphasized that “the mistakes and omissions”, those that were made, those that were made wrong due to bad estimates, coordination, etc. but also those that were not “causally linked to the tragic outcome” of July 23, 2018 in Mati.

THE Vassilis Kapernaros, her advocate Varvaras Voukaki-Fitrouwho lost her husband and two children in Mati, raised the issue of the offense of endangerment, which is punishable as a felony.

As Mrs. Voukaki’s advocate stated: “With this answer, we proved that there is an issue of exposure. And to you Mr. President… There is evidence that your court may act on the felony charge of the report.”

The lieutenant general said that he does not accept the reports, from the side of the State, about difficulties for the aerial vehicles to fly that afternoon, while being called to answer about the case of Kinetta, just a few hours before the fire in Eastern Attica, he said: “In Kinetta there was immediate mobilization while here there was an oligopoly. The lack of mobilization and coordination of the ground forces starts from the time the Fire Department was informed about the fire. He had to mobilize all forces immediately. Here we see mobilization too late. Subsequently, the required ground forces that the ESKE officials were supposed to mobilize did not go to the incident. It is unacceptable that only one air vehicle was operationally mobilized.”

Advocate: Could these people have been saved if they had been notified in time?

Witness: The world could have been saved if a suggestion had been made and they had been notified in time.

The witness, when asked to answer whether the matter of “arbitrary construction” invoked by the State side, said that the Eye was not then included in the arbitrary. “I am not an urban planner. But the Eye was not then included in the arbitrary. The Fire Department must in any case provide assistance, whether it is arbitrary or not. Mati, however, entered this map of the arbitrary after the fact,” he said.

The witness also said that the measure of the organized removal of citizens had been activated since 2007, but was implemented for the first time in 2018 in Psachna Evia. As for the 112, Mr. Gourbatsis said: “It was foreseen since 1998. It was upgraded in 2014 and was supposed to be implemented in its current form but it had not been activated. When the contract was signed in 2014, there were irregularities and vagueness. It has been implemented since 2020. Now we have gone to the other extreme: With the smallest thing we activate it…”.

The trial continues tomorrow.