Athens, Greece—Flash flooding swept through an Aegean island early Sunday, sending torrents of mud and debris through residential streets, destroying multiple homes, and leaving two people dead from drowning.
The Hellenic Fire Service confirmed the fatalities after emergency crews recovered the bodies from flooded ground-floor structures near a rapidly rising drainage canal. Sudden rainfall delivered weeks of expected precipitation within hours, overpowering local stormwater systems and cutting off access routes to coastal settlements.
Muddy runoff poured down surrounding hillsides before daylight, tearing through stone foundations, pushing parked vehicles into the sea, and breaching outer residential walls.
Rescuers deployed inflatable boats and heavy machinery through narrow village streets filled with uprooted trees, collapsed retaining masonry, and destroyed electrical infrastructure. Emergency calls poured into municipal dispatch centers as water levels surpassed one meter in low-lying residential sectors.
"The volume of water moving down the mountain washed through the lower floor of our residence within minutes, giving us no time to salvage property or secure structural doors," a local resident recounted during evacuation operations near the harbor.
Civil defense crews established temporary shelter points at an inland gymnasium while engineers began preliminary structural safety assessments on adjacent surviving buildings.
Municipal crews worked into the evening hours clearing blocked culverts to allow trapped standing water to drain back toward the coast.
Local administrative offices confirmed that power supply disruptions remain widespread across the northern half of the island while water utility repair teams evaluate fractured underground pipelines.
The Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection has dispatched additional engineering units and disaster relief teams by sea to support ongoing recovery efforts.
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