The government is exposed following revelations about the time it was informed about the fact that people had died in the deadly Eastern Attica wildfires.
It became known that at 19:08 on the afternoon of 23 July, four-and-a-half hours before the coordinating committee convened in the presence of the PM and television cameras, the central Port Authority of Rafina had sent a signal to the Coast Guard operations centre about constant flows of saved people and of corpses.
This revelation was published today by Eleftheros Typos, which brought to light the Rafina Coast Guard log with communications between Rafina’s Central Port Authority and the Operational Centre of the Coast Guard.
The signal states that at that moment, “there were constant flows of saved people, and corpses that were discovered in the area outside the port of Rafina and the Mati Sailing Club, as well as in the wider sea area”.
The same log reveals that at 22:30 on Monday, Deputy Shipping Minister Nektarios Santorinios, the General Secretary of Ports and Port Policy Christos Lambridis, Coast Guard Chief Stamatis Raptis and the second deputy chief Athanasios Dounis, had seen and heard about the corpses of victims.
Interior Minister Panos Skourletis and Infrastructure Minister Christos Spirtzis yesterday said the PM was informed of uncorroborated reports of dead people but the cameras had left.
“The prime minister learned that that there were unconfirmed reports of dead people after the cameras left the operational centre last Monday,” Skourletis said, in an effort to justify the PM, who did not refer to the deaths. He said that New Democracy’s charge that the government covered up the number of dead is groundless and not serious.
