Greeks voiced despair and disbelief on Thursday after a flash flood killed at least 15 people and left hundreds homeless, with many blaming a system that allowed houses to be built on dried up river beds.<\/p>\n
In the towns of Nea Peramos and Mandra west of the capital Athens, crumpled cars and mangled furniture lay on roads caked in the thick mud left behind by a raging torrent that smashed through homes on Wednesday morning.
\n\u201dWe are ruined. My tavern and my house are gone,\u201c said Paraskevas Stamou, a restaurant owner in Mandra. \u201dEverything is gone, the road is gone, the water is still flowing and we were flooded again last night and this morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are expecting another downpour tonight. It\u2019s like God hates us,\u201d he told Reuters.<\/p>\n
To escape the lethal floodwaters, residents took desperate measures.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had nowhere to sleep. We slept on the roof, we found carpets to cover ourselves,\u201d said a man in Mandra whose house was gutted by the flood but remained standing.
\nBetween sobs, his mother added: \u201cEverything went. We don\u2019t have anyone to help us. I don\u2019t have help from anyone.\u201d
\nBad weather continued on Thursday. Officials said they were waiting for conditions to improve before giving a clearer picture of the damage. Five people were still missing.<\/p>\n
Flags flew half-mast from state buildings and the Acropolis on Thursday as the government declared three days of national mourning.<\/p>\n
Newspapers expressed anger. \u201cA Crime,\u201d was the headline in Ta Nea daily, superimposed on a picture of a woman being comforted next to an overturned car. \u201cThe Deeds of Man,\u201d wrote the leftist Avgi, referring to unlicensed constructions.<\/p>\n
Experts blamed haphazard construction which the natural path for water runoff, and soil erosion on a mountain range hit by fires.<\/p>\n
Both towns were built along an old motorway linking Athens to the Peloponnese city of Corinth. As building crept closer to the road, streams that would have drained runoff from the nearby Pateras mountains were blocked.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course the state wasn\u2019t prepared \u2026 we cannot compete with nature,\u201d said Christos Zeferos, head of the research center for Atmospheric Physics and Climatology Academy of Athens, adding that climate change meant people should expect more weather-related disasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe should be prepared for more frequent, and different phenomena,\u201d he told Reuters.<\/p>\n
Many of the victims were elderly. The youngest was a 36-year old truck driver who called his mother as the floodwaters rose around his lorry. The line went dead soon afterwards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Greeks voiced despair and disbelief on Thursday after a flash flood killed at least 15 people and left hundreds homeless, with many blaming a system that allowed houses to be built on dried up river beds. In the towns of Nea Peramos and Mandra west of the capital Athens, crumpled cars and mangled furniture lay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":53350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7863],"tags":[26785,26786,26787],"class_list":["post-53349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-english-section","tag-flash-flood","tag-greece","tag-mandra"],"yoast_head":"\n