With shots and spikes against the conclusions of the judicial report on the causes of the tragedy in Eye began his plea in the fatal fire trial the then Commander of the Unified Operations Coordination Center Ioannis Fostieris.

Mr. Fostieris, after expressing his sadness for what happened on July 23, 2018 in Mati, attempted to analyze in detail in court the way it operates YOU ARE stressing many times that the Centre “doesn’t do crisis management. We manage the available forces” he said and added a little later that “I am governed by the status of the commander of the fire service”.

In this section of his apology, Mr. Fostieris emphasized that in that period, the technical infrastructure for 112 began to be created pointing out that this possibility did not exist then.

Referring to the day in question the defendant pointed out several times that the prevailing weather conditions were extremely unfavorable for their work referring to an “Extreme Weather Event” that required special measures.

As he mentioned, essentially commenting on the position of the judicial expert Dimitris Liotsios regarding the seriousness of the phenomena: “Here we have a phenomenon. An extreme meteorological phenomenon. It is recorded by the weather stations. The Penteli station reports a steady six Beaufort wind with 8 to 9 Beaufort gusts. Do you realize what that means? A plane cannot make successful drops with those the conditions”. In fact, speaking of a “lower officer” as he characterized Mr. Liotsios, irritated he continued: “What should we do? Should we send something to make fun of the people that we sent? We are professional firefighters, we are not politicians. In every incident the appropriate will be sent medium that offers work. We don’t do politics. Tragical things have been said in your court like having the pezetel come from Lamia. Come and throw 1 ton at such an event? If I had suggested these I would have been thrown from my chair ..”.

As stated by the defendant ESKE does not have a GEETHA mode of operation “it is a political administrative service of the State” as he said “We are headed by a political leader who gives orders and they are accepted. If he tells the leader something he will execute it, the structure is political.»

The defendant described as “lame” the question of whether there was an alert. “It’s a dumb question to ask whether a precaution was taken. It was certainly observed. In the presence of political and physical leadership, it is not possible not to be on the lookout”. He also referred to the issue of the ESKE organizational chart, saying that “I wish we could create 15 more jobs in the call center. For us it was decided not to have a priority line, this, however, creates a problem because they say they call us and they don’t answer. There were three operator jobs. I can tell you that in a power outage somewhere in Athens it is not an exaggeration to say that we may have 2,500 calls..”

With regard to aerial surveillance, which allegedly did not function sufficiently on the day in question, the defendant again responding to what was heard in court about the possibility of using two-seater Pezetels he said “There is no laden surveillance with laden pezetels. On that day there was surveillance by the Hellenic Air Sports Federation, which is no accident. It has more modern pagetels. But there is no surveillance with a loaded 215 (canard) either..” He also added that a type of surveillance is done anyway by the civil aviation as well, as the pilots inform the Control Tower of events (smoke) by signaling so that the Control Tower can speak with the closest of the Air Force “In the dispute it happened ” said the accused.

Finally, in the position of the expert’s conclusion that it was volatile the fateful afternoon from the Eye while he could have made more drops, the head of ESKE at the time said “My mother is burning below, the tanks (of the aircraft) are not emptying. They are telling you things that are not true. In these cases there is only one question:” how much time do we have?” Nothing else. The pilot decides based on the actual air time available.”