Two people die after flash floods in Crete as rescue teams continue search

Rescue workers have recovered the body of a woman who is the second person to die in flash floods caused by severe storms that swept across the Greek island of Crete.

With the aid of drones, the fire service’s special disaster unit found the 49-year-old on Sunday in the Mediterranean off Agia Pelagia, a seaside resort northwest of Crete’s capital, Heraklion. The victim, a mother of two, had been swept into the sea as she tried to get out of a car washed away by the floods.

The discovery ended a search operation that began on Saturday when the body of Kostas Vergakis, the vehicle’s driver, was found in the car.

The weekend storm unleashed the equivalent of four months’ rainfall in a matter of hours on coastal villages, flooding roads, shops and homes. As rescue teams continued to comb the area on Sunday, the Greek state broadcaster ERT described scenes of “biblical catastrophe”, with footage of cars and other debris submerged under seawater in Agia Pelagia and Sitia in the east of the island, where a state of emergency was declared.

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“The situation is out of control,” said the mayor of Sitia, Giorgos Zervakis, ahead of government officials announcing a €400,000 compensation package with immediate effect.

“There have been landslides, roads are closed, areas are impassable because of cars and streets have turned into rivers. In all the years I have been in Sitia, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Local police said eight tourists and a guard were trapped in Sitia’s archaeological museum as torrential rains lashed the port town. Thousands of holidaymakers were pictured gathered in the departure hall at Heraklion’s international airport after flights were cancelled because of submerged runways.

“Areas of the international airport have flooded and immediately have to be cleared,” Giorgos Pliakas, the airport’s manager, told the local news outlet Cretapost. “No one can tell when flights will resume.”

Crete is among Greece’s most popular destinations and has attracted six times its resident population in visitor numbers so far this year. Heraklion airport is the second largest in the country with more flight arrivals and departures than anywhere outside Athens.

Meteorologists, who had predicted the powerful storm, said protective measures should have been taken earlier. “It was foreseen by our meteorological models,” said Dr Kostas Lagouvardos, a research director at the National Observatory of Athens. “Some 150mm of rain, the equivalent of four months’ rainfall in eastern Crete, fell in less than 12 hours. There should have been more preparedness and co-ordination across agencies. Given the forecasts archaeological sites ought to have been closed and citizens informed.”

Mr Lagouvardos said while the flooding could be characterised as an extreme weather event he did not think it was linked to climate breakdown in a country that was hit by unprecedented wildfires last year as a result of a historic succession of heatwaves. “Mercifully we had a mild summer this year,” he added.

But officials dispatched to the island said impoverished infrastructure and sub-standard drainage systems undoubtedly played a role in the damage. — Guardian