Athens Explosion Collapses Building in Plaka
In Athens' historic Plaka district, beneath the Acropolis, a two-story building collapsed this morning after an explosion. Two women were pulled from a neighboring building, with a gas leak suspected.
An explosion rocked Athens’ Plaka district this morning, September 25, the tourist quarter that sits directly beneath the Acropolis, bringing down an old two-story building on Lisikratous Street, across from the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Greece’s fire service said neighboring buildings were also damaged in the collapse, and that at least two people were injured.
Sources differ on the exact moment of the blast. The Serbian outlet B92 reports that the bang was heard around 7:30 a.m., while the newspaper Srpski Dnevnik writes that the Greek fire service’s operations center was notified of the incident at 7:45, with the explosion itself, according to that source, happening around 8 a.m. The newspaper Danas puts it at just before 8 a.m. Plaka is a part of the city that thousands of tourists pass through daily, sitting just below the Acropolis, Greece’s most visited ancient monument.
Firefighters pulled two women from the neighboring building, one of them elderly, according to Srpski Dnevnik. Both were taken by ambulance to Georgios Genimatas Hospital, where they received first aid. A passerby suffered minor injuries from debris scattered across the street by the blast.
The debris, B92 reports, also damaged parked cars nearby, while the shockwave shattered windows and damaged shops in the area. The explosion was powerful enough to be heard across a large part of central Athens and also sparked a small fire.
According to the fire service’s statement, 20 firefighters with six vehicles were deployed to the scene, along with a special rescue vehicle from the 1st Special Disaster Response Unit, known as 1st EMAK. City of Athens services also assisted with clearing machinery, and the arson investigation unit tasked with determining the exact cause of the incident was called in. Police immediately cordoned off the area around the collapsed building.
What Caused the Explosion?
The cause has not been officially confirmed, but early information and local Greek media point to a natural gas leak. Witnesses who were nearby said they noticed a strong smell of gas shortly before the blast.
This is how a woman who works in that part of Plaka described the moment to reporters, confirming that she had indeed smelled a strong odor of gas just before the explosion:
Smoke came out, I watched the building collapse in front of me. All the windows shattered. There was an elderly woman inside, but she got up and moved away. The police came and took us outside. At first they said it was caused by a car bomb, and then they told us it was caused by gas.
A colleague of hers, who was at the site of the blast at the moment it happened, gave a similar account.
There was a loud bang, we weren’t hurt, we were lucky. It smelled of gas, like fuel, and there was smoke. I saw an elderly man down by the entrance, he’d hurt his head. Three people are injured. Our apartment, one of the apartments, is completely destroyed.
No Greek institution has so far released an official report on the cause of the explosion, and the arson investigation unit has yet to announce the results of its inquiry. Police are not ruling out any scenario for now, although all the evidence available so far, from the smell of gas to the nature of the damage, points to a fault in the gas installation rather than a deliberate act.
