On Tuesday the devastation was complete. Much of Mati, the seaside resort at the centre of Greece’s worst wildfires in more than a decade, was no more.
In the inferno it had been rendered lifeless, its streets turned into carpets of ash, its buildings blackened, its cars morphed into carcasses of steel, some piled one on top of the other, testimony to the terror that had descended on the community on Monday afternoon. Gale-force winds had fanned flames as high as walls that had gobbled up the village.
And then there were the dead. By Tuesday afternoon an official death toll of 74 had been announced. With rescue workers going door to door and car to car finding bodies, there were almost certainly more.
What many had hoped would be the best escape from the flames and smoke – the sea – had instead become a route to death. Charred bodies were plucked from the water or found on beaches.
Nikos Stavrinidis, one of more than 700 survivors to be rescued by a flotilla of coastguard vessels, fishing boats and private craft, told how the winds had fanned the flames and whipped up the seas, disorienting those who had rushed into the ocean when there was nowhere else to run.
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