Cyclone Daniel left the road network in Pelion fragmented and damaged in various sections, cutting off transportation, electricity and water supply to many villages in the area.

Makrinitsa is one of those that no longer has water, electricity, or road access, as in the two kilometers that separate it from Portaria, the waterfalls of the Megalo Rematos obliterated a large part of the road surface, along with the slope that supported it.

“There is no communication in Makrynitsa, since Monday… no electricity. Yesterday EMAK released an elderly couple,” says the resident of Portaria, Filippos Karaiskos.

Portaria does not have access from the central intersection to the ring road of Volos, as part of the road has been cut off. The next intersection from ‘Alli Meria, however, leads to the village. From there and higher, the road reaches Chania, but after the village and towards Zagora, the traffic stops. The road is broken in at least five places, where part of the road surface has given way, but to such an extent that it is dangerous to pass. In some other places the collapse of the road is almost total.

The asphalt has been covered in these places with logs, mud and soil, which excavators from the region of Thessaly are trying to remove in order to start repairs.

Zagora and the nearby villages are completely blocked from all directions, since the road network is broken in several places.

Struggle to harvest apples

The dismantling of the rural road network has raised an alarm in the Zagora apple producers’ cooperative, known for the quality of its apples. The eight hundred members of the cooperative are anxious about this year’s harvest, as the harvest was supposed to start on Sunday and so far there is no solution for the transportation of the apples.

“Some fields have been swept away by the waters, but we believe that we will have less damage to the products. The big problem is that there is no possibility for the producers to transport the apples from the field to the factory – the polling station. The rural road network has disappeared” he says Dionysis Valassas, director of the cooperative, told APE BEE and added: “We are talking about 12,500 acres, and 15,000 tons of production. Zagora apples are known all over the world. At the moment, there is no possibility either to bring them or to transport them through Volos in the markets”.

“It should be noted that Zagora no longer communicates by road with any of the other two apple-producing villages of the cooperative, Puri and Makrirrachis. As for the electricity, it came two hours ago,” adds Mr. Valassas.

Stuck tourists in Portaria and Chania

Ron and Gus from Vancouver, Canada are two of the many foreign tourists who came to Portaria to tour Pelion. Unfortunately, the severity of the phenomena stuck them in Portaria and Chania, without any possibility of touring the mountain of the Centaurs. Adrian and Florin from Romania with their wives and children have exactly the same problem. They were in Pelion from the beginning of the weather phenomenon and they spent some nights without electricity and water.

They show on the map the places they would like to visit. They fold him again. They will depart for Volos and from there for other directions. Several foreign tourists are also in other villages that DEDDIE is trying to electrify. Already, all these days aerialists climb the poles and repair the damage. Today, sunshine has helped some work to be done in Pelion, but power is slowly being restored after poles have been swept away by the waters and part of the grid has been damaged.

The sea is gray in Agria, soil covered the beach

The sea at the beach of Agria Volos has changed color in the first fifty meters from the shore. Cyclone Daniel swelled the waters of the village’s stream and brought down from the mountain logs, stones and soil along with branches, “burying” the coastal road in the mud. The brought materials arrived outside the houses, entered basements and ground floors, destroyed household structures and everything in the yards. Since the morning, the residents were removing the soil from the houses with shovels, while crews from the municipality and the region were digging in the torrent to open roads for the water.

A resident of the area, Mr. Dimitris Papaioannou, reported that the rushing waters from the mountain “brought down entire elbows”, which blocked the gap under the two bridges, causing the water to overflow over them and bring soil and stones to the coastal zone .

“They stopped outside my house, it’s the first time I’ve seen something like this,” Mr. Papaioannou told APE-MPE and added: “All the household goods were destroyed, the mud entered the yard and the basement.”

Of course, in every second sentence the residents of the area mentioned how “lucky” they were in their misfortune, compared to the fate of the villages of the Thessalian plain. Another resident, Mr. Christos Zahopoulos, was watching the efforts of the crews, who with trucks and excavators are trying to open passages for the water and told us that “an elderly man who also lived through Janos, says that such a phenomenon is bound to appear in the village since 1956. It was a big disaster,” says Mr. Zahopoulos.