Storm Elias crashes into Greek city, dumping heavy rain, knocking out power

A second powerful storm in less than a month hammered parts of central Greece, sweeping away roads, smashing bridges and flooding thousands of homes, just weeks after floods left 17 dead.

The storm — named Elias — caused extensive flooding in the central city of Volos and left hundreds stranded in nearby mountain villages. The fire service carried out multiple rescues and evacuations, authorities said.

“All of Volos has turned into a lake,” the city’s mayor, Achilleas Beos, told state television.

“People’s lives are in danger. Even I remained trapped, and 80 percent of the city is without power. … I don’t know where God found so much water. It’s like the story of Noah’s Ark.”

Bad weather earlier this month struck the same area, killing 17 people, and causing more than two billion euros ($2.3 billion) in damage to farms and infrastructure.

Residents in Volos used plastic buckets to scoop mud out of their homes to try to protect their belongings. Among them was 83-year-old Apostolis Dafereras, who has lived in a suburb of the city since 1955.

“I have never seen anything like this,” Dafereras said as he tried to push mud and flood water out of his home.

Authorities said the worst damage was reported around Volos and in northern parts of the nearby island of Evia, an area vulnerable to flooding due to the impact of massive wildfires two years ago.

The fire service said it had assisted over 250 people overnight and early on Thursday in the region surrounding Volos, where a curfew was declared Wednesday as Storm Elias made landfall.

The storm also hit the island of Evia, prompting emergency traffic restrictions in the north of the island.

Earlier in September central Greece was devastated by cataclysmic amounts of rain dumped by Storm Daniel, which left 17 people dead, destroyed crops and killed tens of thousands of farm animals across a wide area in the heart of Greece's agricultural production.

Agriculture Minister Lefteris Avgenakis on Wednesday said clean-up crews had disposed of over 180,000 dead livestock and poultry, but were still unable to reach over a dozen chicken farms cut off from access roads.

Destroyed crops include cotton, corn, wheat, apples and kiwis, he said.

Facing a barrage of criticism at a perceived failure in cooperation between the army and civil protection in the hours following the disaster, the government has pledged over two billion euros ($2.1 billion) in reconstruction funds.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski is scheduled to tour the central region of Thessaly on October 5, Avgenakis said.