The nightmare they experienced when the fire swept everything in Mati was also testified today Thursday at the trial for the tragedy, people for whom July 23, 2018 is the day they descended into hell.

On the witness stand stood women who lost their people, who fought to save themselves, who found themselves in a terrifying chaos, helpless before and after the fire.

Maria Avramidou lost her mother, her sister, her son-in-law and her nephew who got stuck in their cars on Democracy Avenue in their attempt to leave their house in Mati. She and her daughter were saved as they moved downstream towards Athens: “I was lucky that I left in the current of Athens, because five minutes later a police car came and threw people into Mati. And that’s ironic: There was an instrument there that, instead of making things better, was throwing people into the Eye.”

The witness testified that the fire was not dealt with as usual, as in other fires where “the fire department builds a wall on the side of Voutza and thus the fire never passed in Marathon. I hadn’t seen any fire engines that day.”

She described her efforts to locate hers, the phone numbers of anyone in authority or known to find out what was going on, where they were. The frantic search in hospitals and in the port of Rafina where he spent hours looking for them: “Around 7:30 someone picked up the phone to 199. I told him I want to know what is happening in Mati, I have four people. He said “I don’t have anything, put the phone down and I’ll pick you up”. Of course he never took me… In Rafina around 12 to 1 in the night, I see someone I know coming out of a boat and he told me that there are many dead people behind. My legs were cut off there. I could not believe that my family would not be saved… We went to the Port Authority and declared them missing”.

“We were not respected either before the fire or after.

Mrs. Avramidou conveyed to the judges the image she saw the next day, when she went with her sister’s other son to Mati to search: “the first thing we saw were burnt cars, we saw a scene of war. The wildness of the landscape was indescribable. My nephew went ahead with a friend of his and at some point they found our cars, intact. We kept searching for days… Finally, they were identified through DNA… The next few years were very difficult… they were all ashes in our life. It is something for us that will never pass… It is unimaginable that this happened 32 kilometers from the Hellenic Parliament: 104 people were burned, 58 were burned, people drowned in the sea. It cannot be a random event, surely something went wrong, there was no business that day… If we knew something and were suspicious about the fire, I would not have taken the car. The easiest thing was to meet at the port of Matios”.

The witness expressed her anger and bitterness at the treatment they received even before the Eye burned down, but also after the devastating fire that left behind a hundred dead: “They messed with us, they shook the finger at us! We were not respected either before the fire or after. Unfortunately, we felt that we were not being listened to by the previous court.”

Angeliki Paleologopoulou, who testified in court, was in the car with Mrs. Avramidou’s sister and nephew. He was saved because he managed to reach the sea amid exploding cars and screaming people who were burning.

“We stayed four hours at sea but we started getting hypothermia. We went outside, there was also a family who were crying loudly and they told us that there was an explosion in their car and their mother didn’t make it and was burned… The help we hoped for never came. At one point we saw a faint light and heard from Duduka that two fishing boats would come… I also heard on the news that the prime minister and the others said that everything went well and I thought that these people (who were together in the car) would be fine too … But …”.

Eleni Papapostolou narrated what she lived in the sea where she was with her parents, chased by the flames, explosions and the unimaginable heat load. The woman saw her priest father to ask forgiveness from God and drown in the waves.

Crying, the witness said:

“The sea slowly started to make waves, it wasn’t like we were going anywhere but we were drifting. I started to get tired. When the sea started getting rough, my mother and I were trying to keep my father afloat, the waves were coming against us. Then I first heard my father calling for help. I was very tired but I did everything to keep him afloat. This took an hour. He raises his hands up and says “God forgive me”, turns to my mother “thank you for what you have done for me”, and says “to everyone…” and that was his last word. A snore is heard and he passed away… We kept him with us. I turned him upside down and tied the scarf around my left wrist. I told her either the three of us or none of us will go together.

So close to Athens, Rafina, the Limenikou base, everyone could be there. It wasn’t! A fishing boat picked us up.”