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SOT, Father Andreas, Odou village priest and local resident (Greek): “We saw the smoke coming from the area of Arakapas. We run over to see but as soon as we saw the fire, in less than 30 minutes the flames surrounded our own village. The speed that the fire was spreading was very fast, and very large flames.”
SOT, Father Andreas, Odou village priest and local resident (Greek): “You know, I suffered a big loss. I lost greenhouses, farms filled with tomatoes ready to harvest, I would produce around 150 crates of tomatoes per day, and now I don’t have anything to eat. It is so difficult. But when the hardest thing came, when we were informed about the workers who were missing and later found dead, we said forget about the material loss.”
SOT, Nicolis Ihab, Egyptian farm worker (Greek): “I was the one who found the four bodies. From the hill I saw their car, it was kaput (destroyed). I went down the road to get a closer look, I checked around the car but found no-one, so I climbed up a rock, around 50 metres, and from there I saw those guys laying down on the ground, turned black like coal.”
SOT, Stephanos Stephanou, AKEL Party General Secretary (Greek): “Every time such big issues arise, unity (amongst political factions) is a given. However, the government is called upon to do all those things that need to happen. Our first priority is to see to the needs of the people of these affected communities, and then we will take note of the issues of the government mobilisation lacking, because through adversity we find out how to improve first response mechanisms, so that we can handle crises effectively. I have to say that many times we observed that the government has other priorities than supporting the fire dept and other first responder teams.”
SOT, Menelaos Philippou, Odou village community leader (Greek): “It was a lot, it was very hard. We are still worried about fires flaring up again tonight, I think after this night we’ll be ok. Now, as for the damages, they are too many to count or calculate right now. Also there was a major tragedy that hit our village, four people from Egypt, who lived and worked here, it was tragic.”
#Cyprus #Odos #ForestFires
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