The floods devastated the fertile plain of Thessaly in central Greece in early September
Athens:
Facing criticism for his perceived poor handling of the fires and floods that hit Greece this summer, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis promised new funding and reforms to fight the “climate war.” The promises could revive the image of his newly elected government, which has been tarnished by images of residents taking refuge on their rooftops and desperate for rescue as rising waters inundate ill-prepared areas.
“Greece is facing a war in a time of peace,” Mitsotakis said in his keynote speech at the Thessaloniki International Fair on Saturday.
“Over a two-week period we experienced the worst bushfires and the worst floods in our history,” he added.
“The climate crisis is here and it’s forcing us to see everything differently,” he said.
The floods devastated the fertile plain of Thessaly in central Greece in early September.
The storms killed seventeen people, engulfed cotton crops and fruit trees, and killed hundreds of thousands of animals in the Greek breadbasket.
They devastated a country that had just been hit by “the largest fire ever recorded in the EU”, according to a European Commission spokesman, in the northeastern region of Evros, bordering Turkey.
Twenty-eight people died in the fires, including two firefighter pilots and twenty migrants in the Evros region.
The deadly fire followed violent flames that devastated the tourist islands of Rhodes and Corfu in July, prompting thousands of evacuations.
Mitsotakis also promised a 10 percent discount on property taxes for anyone who insures their home against natural disasters, and he is considering making such insurance mandatory.
The Sunday newspaper Protothema saw these announcements as “a restart” for the government.
The Conservative leader admitted that there had been some “confusion of responsibilities” between the state services responsible for responding to torrential rains, and “the frequent tendency” to shift blame to others.
“In Thessaly and Evros I have heard the anger of the people,” said the prime minister, whose New Democracy (ND) party won an absolute majority in June’s parliamentary elections.
He has received sharp criticism from the opposition and residents affected by the floods.
The government was criticized for the slowness of emergency services and lack of preparedness, despite Thessaly already being hit by extreme weather in 2020.
In the hours after the disaster, fingers were pointed at failures in cooperation between the military and civil defense.
In just three months as president, Mitsotakis has seen two of his ministers resign, including one responsible for civil protection, because he was on holiday on an island in the Aegean Sea while fires raged.
The press is abuzz with rumors of a cabinet reshuffle after local elections on October 8, although the government spokesman has denied such plans.
According to analysts and the media, the Minister of Civil Protection and Climate Crisis, Vassilis Kikilias, is also in the top spot.
The Mitsotakis government bears an “enormous responsibility” for the devastation caused by the extreme weather, denounced Effie Achtsioglou, former labor minister and candidate for president of the left-wing Syriza party.
She condemned the fact that “no serious flood prevention work has been carried out”.
According to a poll for the private television channel Mega, 61 percent of respondents have a negative image of the government and 66 percent believe that the country is going in the wrong direction.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
