We experienced a repeat of Janus with the difference that Janus had smaller rain heights, said Natural Disasters professor Efthimios Lekkas speaking to SKAI regarding the huge disasters in Pelion and Volos.

“We are dealing with an extremely extreme phenomenon, no similar phenomenon has been recorded historically,” he said characteristically and added that the phenomenon of heavy rainfall was essentially combined with other accompanying phenomena, namely landslides, soil erosion and the transport of objects.

We have to see what is happening from the physical-geographic context of Magnesia, said Mr. Lekkas and added that what happened in Pelion is different from what happened in Volos. He explained that in eastern Pelion there are inclined slopes that when eroded by too much water slide down, while in Pelion there is a very large basin of 150 square km where a huge volume of water fell.

This volume of water, 150 million tons of water, cannot be absorbed, he stressed.

When asked if there was a chance that major damages could have been prevented with infrastructure projects, he answered: There is no chance that they will receive all the projects and that we have done all this volume of water. But we can mitigate the effects, but that takes time.”

Finally, he emphasized that an overall assessment of the situation in the region should be made immediately. “I believe that the damage that has been caused is very significant and we cannot estimate it yet.”