For a “vile and vulgar attack” on residents of a long-suffering district in the city of Eye the centenary was celebrated by the owner of a piece of land on which 26 victims of a deadly fire met their death. The owner referred to the administrative attacks made in the context of the tragedy from the political side of the disaster, which, justifying the scale of the tragedy, spoke of arbitrariness, lack of access to the sea and urban development violations. OUR Anastasia Frankouwho owns the horror story, was scathing about the official excuses, stating that it was a “despicable attack on the victims”.

“This narrative that the residents are allegedly to blame is not true, the houses are not to blame, there were passages. There was no notification from anyone, they burned like mice. It is pitiful and vulgar to attack people who have lost their families and all their property,” said Anastasia Fragu. “We were blamed,” he continued, “all over Greece at a meeting of ministers the day after the fire, for the deaths of 26 people who were found burnt on our territory. We were accused of intrusion. My house is not arbitrary. On our site there are no steps to the sea in the classical sense, these are steps carved into the rocks by my grandfather. It’s impassable, it’s a rock. Those who were saved were saved from there. Unfortunately, all 26 people did not survive because they were overtaken by the heat.” The witness pleaded the duty of her family, who opened the door of her precinct to give a way out of hell and destruction to people pursued by fire.

“They didn’t do anything”

“This narrative that the residents are allegedly to blame is not true. It’s not the fault of the houses, there were passages. There was no notification from anyone, ”the owner of the site, where 26 dead were found, testified in court.

Testimony of a former professor of chemistry, Soumelas Hadjilazaridou, who sobbingly described her desperate attempt to save herself by swimming for hours in the sea, shocked the court. An eyewitness described how she managed to survive until she was picked up by Egyptian fishermen as she recovered from the effort of fighting the waves. The witness spoke about the criminal responsibility of the authorities, who “did nothing to save the world.”

“The houses of Matiu,” said the witness, “are not dilapidated. All neat and decent, well maintained houses. The roads are long. More than twenty exits to the sea. The reason for this was not houses and roads, but the fact that no one came to save us. In this tragedy, no one notified anyone. A duduk and a tricycle were passing by, someone should warn us…”.

“Absolute Fear”

Other witnesses such as Antonios Yannakodymoswho revealed that everyone in his family, including one victim, his father, would have been burned if they hadn’t acted on their own. “We experienced absolute fear, impoverishment, humiliation, abandonment by everyone,” the witness emphasized, adding about the political management of the disaster: “At 12 at night they said that we probably had a dead person. Quicker. It marked me…”