Filed: November 21, 2023, 7 a.m. GMT
The fires came first. Then the floods.
In the small village of Sesklo in central Greece, 46-year old Vasilis Tsiamitas has felt the extremes of both freak weather phenomena this summer, that have made Greece a climate change hotspot.
Storm Elias flooded his house, damaged his beach bar and swept away his car in September, finishing off what was left weeks earlier by Storm Daniel, Greece’s most intense on record, and a July wildfire that scorched his family almond grove.
“God only knows how I will get past this,” said Tsiamitas, standing outside his two-storey family house. The front door is off its hinges, propped up against a wall next to wooden boards soaked by floodwater.
“What else could hit me? It can’t get any worse,” he told Reuters.
Fierce storms and floods have become more frequent in recent years while rising temperatures make summers hotter and drier, creating tinder-box conditions for wildfires.
Muddy roads and household furniture stacked up outside to dry in villages across the central mainland region of Thessaly, are a constant reminder of the steps Greece needs to take as it adapts to climate change to mitigate the impact of such freak weather events.
Sesklo, a village of about 800 residents near the port city of Volos and home to one of Europe’s oldest prehistoric settlements, has survived natural disasters through the centuries.
But its eldest residents, Tsiamitas says, have never experienced anything like this year’s devastation.
“It’s the first time that our village is tested so much,” said Tsiamitas, who is also the local community leader. “We have elderly people sitting at the village square who are 95 years old, 90 years old, they have never experienced such a thing before.”
