In a verdict delivered by a Three-Member Misdemeanour Court in Greece on Tuesday, eight former senior officers in the fire brigade, including the former fire brigade chief, general secretary for civil protection Ioannis Kapakis, and the man who started the forest fire, were found guilty for the deaths and injuries that resulted from the July 2018 forest fire in Mati. The wildfire claimed the lives of 104 people.
The judges found that these officials had contributed to the deaths and dozens of injuries that resulted from the fire that tore through the seaside town. Citizens were left helpless by authorities in the face of advancing flames.
The individuals were found guilty of multiple counts of homicide, resulting in bodily harm through negligence and numerous specific acts.
The court also unanimously acquitted 11 defendants standing trial, including the former Attica region governor Rena Dourou and the then mayors of Marathonas, Rafina-Pikermi, and Penteli. Based on the court’s decision, there was no evidence of possible intent that could support the offense of endangerment to a criminal degree.
For the key verdicts, the court’s decisions were unanimous, while in other cases they were reached by majority.
Found guilty of the 2018 fire
Among those found guilty were former fire brigade chief Sotiris Terzoudis, who was additionally found guilty for diverting a helicopter from Eastern Attica to the Corinth refineries, failing to mobilize coast guard vessels and relocate aircraft so that they would not be immobilized by the weather, and not recommending an organized precautionary evacuation.
The Fire Brigade Deputy Chief Vasilieos Matheopoulos was found unanimously guilty of the same charges, as was the head of the joint operations coordination centre, Ioannis Fostieris; the head of the 199 emergency call service, Christos Golfinos; the director of the fire brigade’s civil protection operations centre, Filippos Panteleakos; the chief of the Nea Makri fire brigade station, Damianos Papadopoulos, who was found to be absent from the fire; the commander of the Athens Fire Brigade Command, Nikolaos Panagiotopoulos; and the commander of the East Attica Fire Brigade, Charalambos Chionis, for not providing briefings on the course of the fire.
The court acquitted the pilots of the fire brigade helicopters, the head of the EMAK rescue teams, senior police officers, and local government officials but found Daou resident Konstantinos Aggelopoulos, responsible for starting the fire, guilty of arson through negligence. The court will now consider extenuating circumstances before handing down sentences.
The Mati fire was the worst disaster of modern Greek history
It has been almost seven years since the devastating fires of July 23, 2018 at the seaside Athens resort of Mati that left the nation plagued by unforgettable and horrifying images and accounts of the incident. That day’s fear and devastation still haunt the people of Greece.
As photos and footage from that day re-emerge in the media and the posts of victim’s relatives and friends again flood social media, a resounding “WHY” still looms unanswered. The Mati fire was the worst of a series of wildfires in Greece that began in the coastal areas of Attica in July 2018.
The fires were, at that time, the second-deadliest wildfire event in the 21st century, following the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Australia that killed 173.