Athens: Six Confirmed Dead, Four Americans
Six people died when a building collapsed in Athens's Plaka district near the Acropolis, among them four American tourists and a British Greek married couple from the second floor.
The search for people missing in the rubble of a building that collapsed on Friday in the Athens district of Plaka ended on Saturday, when Greek fire services confirmed that six people had died, three women and three men. Srpske Novine reported on Friday that an explosion had brought down the building in the neighborhood near the Acropolis, and the identities of the victims are now emerging.
In brief:
- The building at 15 Lysikratous Street, in Plaka, collapsed on Friday around 7:30 a.m., likely due to a gas leak
- Six people died, among them four American tourists and a British Greek married couple
- Athens Mayor Haris Duka calls it a catastrophe, the police arson unit is leading the investigation
- Two neighboring buildings remain closed pending inspection
According to Greek authorities, the four American victims were renting an apartment on the building’s first floor and were due to head to the airport that same day to fly back to the United States. CBS News, citing the newspaper Kathimerini, reports that they were a family of four: a married couple, their son and the son’s girlfriend. As of Saturday, Greek authorities had not officially released their names, ages or which part of the United States they were from.
A married couple, a British man and a Greek woman, lived on the second floor. Sources disagree on their ages: Euronews reports the man was 78 and the woman 77, while the Croatian outlet Index.hr, citing The Guardian, gives the opposite, 77 for him and 78 for her. Athens Deputy Mayor Paris Charlaftis said the British victim was a painter with a partial disability who had difficulty moving, which is why officials believe the couple were unable to leave the apartment before the explosion.
There is another discrepancy in the reporting on the collapsed building itself: CBS News describes it as a three story building, while Index.hr, also citing The Guardian, says the mid twentieth century building had two floors.
How the search unfolded
The explosion struck just after 7:30 a.m. on Friday and brought down part of the building within seconds, while the blast wave and flying debris damaged nearby houses and cars. Two women from the neighboring building were pulled out and taken to hospital, and another person suffered minor injuries from flying debris. Around 30 firefighters took part in the search with six vehicles and three trained dogs, using geophones to detect sounds beneath the rubble and thermal cameras to locate anyone who might be trapped. Mateos Artavanis, who owns the ground floor apartment, told Kathimerini that he was not in the building at the time of the explosion and had been unable to reach the British Greek couple from the floor above after the accident.
Was a gas leak to blame?
Athens Mayor Haris Duka said the collapse was probably caused by a gas leak, though authorities are considering other possibilities as well. The police arson unit is formally leading the investigation. “This is an unbelievable catastrophe,” Duka told CBS News, adding that the two neighboring buildings remain unsafe and are awaiting an inspection to determine whether they can still stand or must be demolished.
Speaking from the scene, the deputy mayor said the investigation was now focused on the mechanism of the collapse itself:
We are now focused on the cause of the explosion. What could have made the building collapse in just a few seconds?
Residents of Plaka had warned the city and utility companies about the risk of gas leaks and short circuits as far back as a year earlier, according to a letter from a residents’ association published by Kathimerini, which also called for an emergency evacuation drill in the neighborhood. According to a citizens’ group on social media, a resident of the same street had reported a possible gas leak to the authorities even before the explosion.
Short-term rentals under scrutiny
The accident has reignited debate in Athens over who oversees short term rental apartments, the type the American victims had also been renting. Architect Georgos Zafiriju, chairman of the local residents’ committee in Plaka, said hotels operate under their own rules and chambers, while similar apartments, which he said residents do not even want in the neighborhood, go largely unsupervised. The Greek government recently tightened restrictions on short term rental permits specifically in Plaka, one of the most visited districts in Athens, through which 4.6 million visitors passed last year, according to figures for the nearby Acropolis.
Formal identification of all six victims was continuing through the weekend. The priest of a nearby church announced that Sunday’s liturgy would be held outdoors because of damage to the building, while the inspection of the two at risk buildings on Lysikratous Street had yet to determine whether they would have to be demolished.
