Thessaly is trying to get into the tourist map again after the floods of 2023. Local authorities insist that their parts, besides gorgeous, are now safe – DW reportage

Nearly two years after the spread of bad weather Daniel, which drowned 17 people and nearly 250,000 animals, plunged Larissa and Volos in the mud, made the sea of ​​the Tempi valley and brought Lake Carla to the dimensions it had before the 1962 dried.

Although many of the wounds of the September 2023 megalm, the Region of Thessaly is trying to put the area again on the tourist map. He is trying to convince tourists that it is worth spending their vacation in Pelion or Sporades, to visit Meteora, Olympus or Lake Plastira, assuring them that these places are not only beautiful – who are undoubtedly – but also safe.

Are they really safe? The answer: It is as safe as the rest of the country – and the wider Mediterranean – are safe in the years of climate crisis. Perhaps, even after Daniel’s passion, they may be a little safer, since the country’s first Civil Protection Coordination Center has recently been created in Larissa with the aim of timely prevention and effective crisis management.

Mapping as a tool

This center, presented at a conference in Volos in late April by the Regional Governor of Thessaly Dimitris Kouretas, is involved in the analysis and risk of floods, fires and earthquakes. It is based on the history of each region and the complete mapping of streams and cracks, industries that, if affected, will endanger public health (“Sevezo”), road networks, livestock farms, etc.

The Center coordinates 50 stations that collect meteorological elements and 14 points in the rivers and Lake Carla that measure the water level – with real -time data usable. According to Koureta, if these measurements were existed in 2023, Palamas would have been emptied in time and his inhabitants would not wait for the roofs of their homes to pick them up. Also, 70 cameras have been set up in rough areas that show the intensity of snowfall, rainfall, etc. to sound an alarm in time.

Beauty as financial salvation

Alarm, after all, will mean again – maybe earlier than we expect. In Thessaly, as well as throughout Greece and the Mediterranean, we need to learn to live with the floods. Statistically it was unlikely that within three years two such extreme phenomena as Janus in 2020 and Daniel in 2023 – and yet happened. This is the climate crisis, this will be our new daily life. But life goes on. People want to travel and Thessaly professionals want to welcome them. They are betting on tourism again.

They want to drive out of collective memory the dramatic images of the dead fish in Pagasitic, the rivers of mud in cities and beaches. They want to replace them with the enchanting images of the blooming mountains of the gods (Olympus) and the Centaurs (Pelion), the beaches of Skiathos and Alonissos, the Tsipouradians of Volos and “Moutzouris”. This unique train crossing Pelion, on arched bridges and beside Milies, pine trees and cypresses.

For hoteliers, taverns and other professionals, it is a matter of survival for the tourist season well this year, as it was lost in the mud last year. As for the Greek state, it is facing tourism anyway as the “heavy industry of the country”, but without setting rules and boundaries, without strategic planning. This is evident from the… speed of damage to damage to tourist Magnesia, but also in the rest of Thessaly.

Thessaly-Valnethia, a sad comparison

Just yesterday, nineteen months after the disasters caused by Daniel, contracts for the “urgent” projects of lesions on road and rail infrastructure were signed. The contractors should complete the road projects gradually in 48 months and the railways at 15.

At the Volos conference, most delegates seemed to consider these delays reasonable. Perhaps, because they did not carefully (via zoom) the Minister of the Environment of the Valencia Martinez Moussian administration to say what damage was already being repaired in the Spanish city after the deadly passage of bad weather at the end of October 2024.

It is recalled that Megalimira strangled over 200 people and destroyed, among other things, 64 kilometers of roads and 99 kilometers of rail network. According to Martinez Mousse, in a month the trains were again moving normally and the road network was restored.

On the contrary, five kilometers outside Volos in Alykes, residents wait nineteen months to build their own seaside road. And they will probably wait long. Tourism people, however, are trying to equalize the deficits in infrastructure with their patents and their hospitality. And they hope that the next Daniel will not appear soon.

The lost bet of water scarcity

Nikitas Mylopoulos, a professor of hydrology and aquatic systems analyst, is not optimistic. He estimates that extreme phenomena are the new daily life in the Mediterranean, which is heated four times faster than the rest of the world.

Thessaly, in fact, is even more vulnerable, as it is an area that has been experiencing a huge environmental disaster for years, the water scarcity. “Nativity means that we do not have water because we spent it,” the professor stresses, stressing that Thessaly has the second worst water footprint on the planet after the US. Over -consumption of waters in the Thessalian plain should have stopped for years, but nowhere on the horizon there is no intention for a new aquatic policy.

The water scarcity combined with the fires bring more dangerous floods, it is a vicious circle from which we will not come out if we do not change a radically productive model, unless we give back to nature, the lakes and rivers of their rivers. Until then, Mylopoulos has advised the state to design flood protection projects with the aim of “Diphning”. In simple Greek, the point is to guide the water to leave, without killing and without much disasters.