Storm Bora caused significant flooding in Greece, particularly in Rhodes and Limnos, two tourist islands which were badly affected.
Two people died on the Greek island of Limnosin the Aegean Sea, in bad weather which is affecting a large part of the country and has caused significant damage to the island of Rhodesaccording to authorities on Sunday. The victims are a 57-year-old farmer and a 70-year-old man who died on Saturday on the island of Lemnos, near the Turkish coast, in the northeast of the Aegean Sea, according to Greek police.
The farmer died while trying to attach his car, stuck in mud, to his tractor to tow it, public television channel ERT said. The septuagenarian fell on his head while cleaning the stairs of his house after the passage of the Storm Bora which has been hitting Greece since Saturday.
The latter caused significant damage on the island of Rhodes, in the Dodecanese archipelago, particularly on the road network, homes and businesses, according to the regional governor of the South Aegean, Yiorgos Hadjimarkos. “Rhodes, last night, was severely tested. Dozens of evacuation operations had to be carried out, in particularly difficult conditions”he said in a press release on Sunday.
The inhabitants of this tourist island also close to the Turkish coast received an alert message from the Civil Protection services ordering them to stay at home. A ban on driving vehicles has also been ordered for 24 hours while emergency services are “on high alert”according to the same source.
Photos released by AFP showed a collapsed bridgeof the built-in vehicles on top of each other, devastated roads by mud and falling tree trunks and pieces of wood. Public television ERT broadcast images of flooded land and fields on Lemnos, an agricultural island.
Some 25 firefighters from Athens were sent as reinforcements to this island, according to firefighters, and 35 others to Rhodes. The firefighters received, according to them, 1,076 calls to their operations center between late Saturday morning and Sunday at 5:30 a.m. (03:30 GMT). These calls mainly concerned evacuations, tree felling and water pumping. The majority of calls were reported in Central Macedonia and the island of Limnos.
Greek weather services have warned that storm Bora is expected to cause significant snowfall in western Macedonia and mountainous areas of Epirus (northwest).
Civil Protection, in a warning sent to mobile phones, launched an alert message on Saturday due to the risk of heavy rain and strong winds in Central Macedonia (northeast), Thessaly (center) and Attica, the region surrounding Athens.
