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August 29, 2006
Life is Precious - The Fires in Hanioti, Greece
You may have seen on the news about the fires that have been in Greece recently. Well, my friends Jimmy and Marita were stuck right in the middle of it and Jimmy's written quite an amazing account of what happened. He said it was ok if I put it on here.....
"As some of you may be aware, there was a recent bush fire in the Halkidiki peninsula of Greece. My girlfriend (Marita) and I were staying in the beautiful resort of Hanioti when the fire broke-out.
This is my account of what happened that evening (21st August 2006).
We had just returned from the hotel pool area as strong winds had very suddenly developed.
At 7pm I was due to meet our Tour Rep (Hannah) to book an excursion to the “Waterland” fun park for the following day. On the way to meet Hannah, the hotel receptionist made small talk with me and asked if I had seen that there was a fire in the hills. I went outside of the hotel to have a look and sure enough there was a fairly large cloud of smoke bellowing from the hills. This did not in anyway seem to pose a threat as it was miles away and not very big.
When I arrived back to the hotel room (approx 7:15pm) I explained to Marita that there was a fire in the hills and we decided to have a look from our balcony. The cloud of smoke that I had seen 15 minutes previously had developed considerably. It was now much larger and a lot nearer to us. We decided to vacate the hotel room in order get a better view of what was happening.
I am sorry to say that at this time there was somewhat an air of excitement and interest in the fire as it was quite near but still not a threat (or so we thought).
At approx. 7:40pm it became apparent that fire was heading straight for us and people began to panic. We decided to go into the hotel lobby and demand that we have our passports and it was at this point we realized how enormous the fire was. As we looked out onto the road from the lobby area, all we could see was a wall of flames.
As we made our way out towards the rear of the lobby, the wind direction changed causing a massive surge of heat directed towards us. I remember being literally thrown back because of the intensity of the heat.
By now people were shouting and screaming and in a state of “what do we do”?
All of the local Greek people seemed to be fleeing in their cars which made us even more fearful - I pleaded with one Greek couple to drive us away from the fire as they were entering their car, but they said no.
As the heat grew even more intense and flames were appearing all around us, I began to fear for our lives
We proceeded to run towards the rear of the building where a gate that led down to the beach was situated. The gate was locked. It was approx. 5 feet high and had cast-iron spikes at the top.
Another heavy gust of wind occurred bringing the flames literally over our heads. Hot ash was blown into our eyes making it very difficult to see.
I remember Marita saying to me (as we approached the gate), that she would not make it over. She did not have the strength with what little leverage there was to pull herself up and over. Just as I was pushing her over the fence (in a very dangerous manner), a man appeared beside me and said:
“Don’t panic, we’ll get her over”.
And sure enough she was able to get over.
I immediately followed and began to run with everyone else down towards the beach.
My heart was now in my mouth as the enormity of the blaze became apparent.
Everything behind us was now engulfed by flames. Fire was falling out of the sky coupled with hot ash and very strong winds.
Whilst running to the beach I felt I had to contact my mum and let her know what was happening (I was not sure whether would make it out alive). I reached for my mobile phone and frantically searched for her number.
The fire continued to chase us down to beach where many hundreds of people were gathering.
The winds were now stronger than ever and with them came dense smoke from the fire.
Hundreds and hundreds of people were running up the beach with any means clothing over their mouth to help them breathe. The fire was as far as we could see – a deep orange glow all along the coastline.
After 5minutes of frantically walking I received a call from my sister who was very distressed – she had received the message from my mum that we were trapped in a fire. My sister asked me what she could do to help and the only thing I could think of was for her to pray for rain.
By this point my chest had started to tighten and the saliva in mouth gone due to the smoke which was now everywhere. We could not breathe.
An eerie silence fell around me as my mind told me that I was going to die through lack of oxygen.
We had to keep moving and by this point I was gasping for some water.
We came across a beach bar that bizarrely was still open and serving drinks. I said to Marita we have to stop and get some water otherwise we would die through dehydration. I asked the man for two bottles of water of which he gave me free. I vividly remember saying to him:
“My friend, do you think we will be ok”?
And he replied to me:
“My friend I do not know. I have a wife and a baby in a house on the hills and I am still working here”.
I did not know what to say to him except to thank him for the water.
As we continued to make our way up the coastline, the smoke became more and more dense. We had to rest as we were now extremely breathless.
We sat crouched down by the shores edge, getting what oxygen we could. It was still very difficult to breathe as the smoke was so dense. After about 1 hour sat wondering what the fate of our lives was to be, the wind direction (once again) changed. Only this time it was for the better.
The wind was now blowing from the sea into the mainland. Although this did not eradicate the smoke completely, it provided us with more oxygen and for the first time that night in about 4 hours, I saw the stars. This filled me we some hope.
The fires still raged on in what looked like a beautiful orange sunset in the distance.
Rescue boats had started to appear and were scouring the shoreline for what we later learned was a German tourist who had drowned trying to flee the fires.
I have tried to describe to you the intensity of the heat, the size of the fire and paralysing density of the smoke which we experienced, but I feel I could never really get across how horrific this actually was. I genuinely thought my time was up.
Thank you to everyone who said prayers for us all that night. Although the rain never came, a change in wind direction did and this saved us. Thank you.
I am still finding it hard to believe that this actually happened and occasionally (usually when I’m going to sleep) relive what happened that night. The doctor tells me that talking about what happened is a good way of coping with it, so as you can see that is what I’m doing."
Video Footage:
I was able to record some footage of the fire on my mobile phone just before we ran for our lives. Please understand that at the point of recording we did not think we were in any danger from the fire and was still in a typical holiday, jovial spirit.
You can watch my footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hy81K72q4wE
Here's the coverage from the BBC News Website.
Posted by daveszt at August 29, 2006 12:40 PM
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