Greece: Hundreds rescued in second flood this month

Flooding on September 27, struck central Greece for the second time this month, with the city of Volos especially hard-hit after a prior storm front left 17 dead and caused massive damage.

Hundreds of people were rescued overnight and early on September 28, officials said, as a new storm hit the country just weeks after floods left 17 dead. The fire service said it had assisted over 250 people in the region, Le Monde reports.

Authorities declared a curfew in Volos, a city of nearly 140,000 people, as a storm named Elias made landfall, swiftly turning streets into rivers. The storm had earlier caused flooding on the island of Evia near Athens. Much of Volos was without electricity and sections of the local hospital flooded, though the facility remained operational. At least eight villages outside Volos have also been evacuated. Elias is expected to abate on September 29.

Earlier in September central Greece was devastated by cataclysmic amounts of rain dumped by Storm Daniel. Volos was without drinking water for over two weeks, and the damage to the local utility network has still not been fully repaired. Storm Daniel left 17 dead, destroyed crops, and killed tens of thousands of farm animals across a wide area in the heart of Greece's agricultural production.

Agriculture Minister Lefteris Avgenakis on Wednesday said clean-up crews had disposed of over 180,000 dead livestock and poultry, but were still unable to reach over a dozen chicken farms cut off from access roads. He said that destroyed crops include cotton, corn, wheat, apples and kiwis.

Facing a barrage of criticism at a perceived failure in cooperation between the army and civil protection in the hours following the disaster, the government has pledged over two billion euros ($2.1 billion) in reconstruction funds. EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski is scheduled to tour the central region of Thessaly on October 5, Avgenakis said on Wednesday, September 27.

The heavy rains and flooding followed devastating fires in Greece this summer that killed at least 26 people, most of them migrants trapped in a forest near the northeastern border with Turkey.