Five years and four months after the catastrophic flood in Mandra, Justice is counting down the time to issue its decision on the 25 dead and the huge damage caused by the downpour that hit the city in November 2017.
The trial before the Three-Member Misdemeanor Court for the deadly course of the waters that flooded the city after heavy rain, is heading from today with the speech of the Chief Prosecutor, towards its completion.
The public prosecutor will begin his speech with the beginning of the current procedure, presenting to the court the facts and data that in his judgment are decisive for the 21 accused and their criminal evaluation.
After many months of proceedings with the examination of important witnesses and evidence and after the court heard the objection of the accused to what is attributed to them, the proceedings today, with the proposal of the Prosecutor, enter the final stage.
For what happened in the city of Mandra in the early hours of November 15, 2017, 21 people are accountable who, according to the judicial authorities, are the ones who were responsible for the proper operation of the city’s infrastructure. The then Attica Regional Governor Rena Dourou, the then mayors of Mandra, Elefsina and Megara, as well as those in charge at the time in question: the responsible deputy regional governor, employees of the technical services of Mandra, employees of the and executives of public bodies. The defendants are facing charges that, on a case-by-case basis, relate to the offenses of causing flood by negligence, homicide by serial negligence, bodily harm and violation of building codes.
Today, the prosecutor will evaluate all the material of the case and the multi-month process and will essentially accept or dispute what the case file accuses the accused of the deadly flood. With the guilt or acquittal that he will request for each accused, the Prosecutor will “answer” the question of the trial regarding the existence or non-negligence of those responsible.
Apologizing, Ms. Dourou told the court last January that she was taking political but not criminal responsibility for what happened in the city, while stressing that the severity of the phenomenon was unprecedented.
In the trial for the deadly flood of Mandra, the first witness was the professor of Dynamic Tectonics of Applied Geology & Natural Disaster Management, Efthymios Lekkas, who had referred extensively to two axes that determined the tragic result of the 25 dead: as he had said, the amount of rain in the “anarchic construction” and the complete absence of flood protection works. The professor had even testified that “Mandra is not the exception” as, as he had stressed, the country has not managed to have an institutional framework for floods and fires equivalent to that which exists for earthquake protection.
According to the case file, heaps of factors related to human interventions acted so that huge amounts of water and sediments flooded the city, rushing down from Mount Patera.
The prosecutor’s investigation into the case revealed key factors of omissions and negligence that led to the fatal outcome as it was found that there were no key flood defenses in the area, there was no demarcation and demarcation of streams and a series of serious arbitrariness was tolerated for many years. A total of 39 arbitrary constructions within streams are recorded in the case file, including a municipal depot, an entertainment center, gas stations, a stadium, houses and warehouses.
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